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MEN AGAINST THE STARS 







How I got rid of Dandruff 
for keeps-with Listerine 




In desperation, I called up my doctor about a severe 
case of dandruff which ordinary remedies hadn’t done 
a thing for. “Try Listerine Antiseptic,” he said. “It 
kills the germ that causes dandruff.” 




I doused on Listerine just as it came from the bottle, 
and followed it with massage. Those ugly flakes be- 
gan to go — that annoying itching stopped. My scalp 
felt marvelously clean and cool. 




Man, was I grateful to Listerine! I kept the treat- 
ment up every day for about four weeks, using a 
little olive oil because my scalp was excessively dry. 



At the end of that time I didn’t have a trace of dan- 
druff. And I have prevented a recurrence by using 
Listerine occasionally since then. 



Listerine kills Pityrosporum ovale, 
the germ which causes dandruff 






* * ; * i 



If you have the slightest symptoms of dan- 
druff, start today with daily Listerine mas- 
sages. Such an easy, delightful treatment! 
Scalp and hair begin to feel so fresh and cool 
and clean. Itching and burning stops in an 
amazingly short time. Remember, you’re 
attacking the germ which causes dandruff 
when you use Listerine. In one actual clinical 
test 76% of the dandruff patients who used 






Listerine Antiseptic 
twice a day showed 
either complete disap- 
pearance of, or marked 
improvement in, the 
symptoms of dandruff at the end of four 
weeks. We know of no other dandruff rem- 
edy with a similar clinical record. 

Lambert Pharmacal Co., St. Louis, Mo. 



Pityrosporum opalSt as it 
looks under the microscope^ 
magnified many times. 



The Proved treatment for DANDRUFF 







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• • 

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Number 4 




SCIENCE-FICTION 

Till* R«fltt«re4 U. S. 0««» 



Volume XXI 

JUNE, 1938 

A Street & Smith Publication 



NOTICE— This magazine contains new stories only. No reprints are used. 

Comptete Notfelenes: 

MEN AGAINST THE STARS Monly Wade Wellman 6 

Men died on the attar of leienee — red flre-eraekers in taaee — a> every famoue 
man of rocketry had died — thorl of hie goat I 

SEEDS OF THE DUSK Raymond Z. Gallon 76 

A title of the days when Earth has groirn old and cold, and the least of her chiU 
dren are keening their wits for survival 

Short Stories: 

BELOW— ABSOLUTE! Harry Walton 22 

Into the Pit hi space — a Slackness colder than absolute zero! A sequel to 
**Quiek8ilV€rj VnlimUed/* 

PHILOSOPHERS OF STONE D. L James 62 

An inverted world where the planet was proioplasmie flesh — and intelligenee 
resided in the tnohUe stones! 

ISLE OF THE GOLDEN SWARM Norman L Knight 97 

The tale of a tiny, hidden empire on Earth — an empire that would not be known. 

Serial Novels: 

THE LEGION OF TIME {2nd of III Parts) . . . Jack Williamson 33 

The Legion of Time reaches Jonhar — city of the might-he future — to have it 
dissolve away in mist of prohahility about them! 

THREE THOUSAND YEARS! (Conclusion) . Thomas Calvert McCiary 110 

Gamble, the perfectionist, and Drega, recognizer of human imperfections, reach 
at last understanding — and a new reversion. 



Science Feature Articles: 



THE GREAT EYE R. DeWift Miller 54 

A fact article on the tOO" teleeeope and ite peeeibiltties and limitations. 

WITNESSES OF THE PAST . Willy Ley 136 



Concerning Platypus and others that Need when they shouldn't have — and gave 
naturalists headaches and heartaches! 



Readers* Departments: 

EDITOR’S PAGE .... 



21 

IN TIMES TO COME 135 

The Department of Praphecy and future issues. 

THE ANALYTICAL LABORATORY 135 

A review, in tabular form, of former issues. 

THE COVER— MARS 146 

SCIENCE DISCUSSION AND BRASS TACKS 148 

The Open House of Controversy. 

Cover by Wesso. Illustrations by Binder, Brown, Coughlin, Dold, Schneemon, Wesso. 

Tf)« entire contents «f tbit macazine are prelected by copyright, and muat not be reprinted without the publishers’ permission. 



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STREET ft SMITH PUBLICATIONS. INC., 79 7th AVE., NEW YORK. N. Y. 



THEY PRIED THE LID DFF DAVY JONES' LOCKERI 




POLICE BLOTTER REVEALS 
DARING RESCUE 



Patrolman Eraesc Saftig, 
former Hfe«guard, of 
4487 47th Street, Saa 
Diego, California, whose 
courage and presence of 
mind snatched the life 
of a reckless beach-party 
swimmer from the sea. 



"It was 2:30 A.M. The radio in our car barked 
our number, 'Crystal Pier, a drowning, rush.’ 
From the pier, my partner, Richard V. Disney, 
of 3230 Whittier Street, and I, heard faint cries. 



"When I reached the man he was about done 
for. As I battled the undertow to bring him in, 
he slipped from my grasp and sank. 



"In the darkness I couldn’t 
find his body. Then Disney 
gave me his flashlight, and be- 
cause it kept burning, I was 
able to lo- 
cate the 
victim by 
diving. 



"Together, Disney and I brought 
the body ashore, and then... 

'With the glow of the flashlight on 
that cold, pallid face that seemed 
stilled forever, we tried artificial 
respiration... and it worked! If ever 
a man was saved by the faithful per- 
formance of fresh DATED 'Eveready’ 
batteries, this man was. 



^atiokal 



(Signed) 



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I President 
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Institute 

Established 1914 ties for good pay. 



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Do you too want a better 
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J. E. SMITH. President, Dept. 8ED 
National Radio Institute, Wasliingrton, D. C. 



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Men Against The Stars 



By Manly Wade Wellman 



Human courage and a hard-hearted 
idealist — against the challenge of the 
stars and red firecrackers in space- 




He was engrossed, watching that mutinous ship that had turned back on 
its course to Mars. He did not notice the dark figure that had entered the 

airless observatory. 



ASTOUNDING SCIENCE-FICTION 



'In ship No. Fijty-one, half-way 
from Moon to Mars, jour stubbled 
faces turned to a common, grinning re- 
gard as the pounding rear of the rockets 
died away at last. The skipper, the 
recketman, the navigator, the spacehand. 

“So jar so goody said the skipper 
grimly. “We’ve reached speed. But 
the fuel may decide to go any minute. 
And that’ll be — that.” 

Even as he spoke, the fuel — frightful 
unstable solution of atomic hydrogen — 
went. Four men — the flimsy metal shell 
— the hopes, determination and courage 
that sought to conquer the stars — all 
were gone. For an instant a warm, 
ruby glow, sprinkled with stars of incan- 
descent metal, blossomed in space. The 
men did not mind. They did not know. 

I. 

T ALLENTYRE watched Major 
DeWitt step through the door. 
DeWitt closed the door. Im- 
mediately he slumped back against it, 
his body drained of some stiffening 
thing that had held him up. But for 
the support of the door frame, he would 
have fallen. 

"They won’t go,” DeWitt said 
hoarsely. 

Tallentyre looked at him with wooden, 
unmoving face. If he moved his face, 
if he moved himself in the slightest, he 
felt, he would shatter to dust, like a 
scratched Prince Rupert’s Drop. Gray, 
bloodshot eyes in his lean, high-boned 
face watched his superior motionlessly. 
The leathery skin of his face did not 
move. 

"They won’t go.” DeWitt looked up 
at him, his blotched face working. Tal- 
Jentyre noticed it was hideous. The 
unshielded sunlight of space here on 
Luna tanned human skin black in ir- 
regular spots. The untanned spots on 
DeWitt’s face were white as paper, and 
they wiggled. 

Tallentyre sighed sharply, and moved. 



His gray eyes were cold as fractured 
steel as he watched DeWitt. 

“Thty won’t go — and I won’t send 
them!” DeWitt straightened against the 
door frame and glared at Tallentyre, 
daring him to challenge the statement. 
"I can’t — I won’t let them !” His 
voice rose to a hoarse, grating Scream. 

Major John Tallentyre faced him 
stonily. Outside lay the rock-and- 
pumice paved Luna Spaceport, black 
and silver under shifting sunlight and 
shadow. Above, the star-spattered jet 
of the Eternal Night. The red eye of 
Mars was low in the east. Tallentyre 
looked at it for a moment, quietly and 
thoughtfully. He was cold and icy as 
the spaceways out there. He, too, was 
burned to the patchy blackness of space- 
sun exposure. His gray eyes were 
startlingly light in that sun-scorched 
face. 

“Keep your voice down, DeWitt. 
Those mutineers will hear you. You 
won’t build up their morale by shout- 
ing that yours is shot. Straighten up.” 

DeWitt shook his head groggily. 
Tallentyre was his junior here. For 
a moment, the slap of Tallentyre’s words 
shot an anger into him that half-roused 
him, as had been intended. But it faded. 

“I,” he grated, “don’t give a damn. 
I want them to hear me. I won’t send 
— I won’t let — any more human beings 
go into that.” His arm gestured weakly 
toward the starred blackness beyond, 
his face working. “Fifty-One’s gone. 
You just saw it blow. Those — muti- 
neers — just saw it blow. The men in 
Fifty-One though — they didn’t see it. 

“Sixty ships, Tallentyre. Sixty of 
’em — and two hundred and forty-two 
men started from Earth. Fifty-six ships, 
and two hundred and twenty-two men 
reached Luna Port. Eighteen men lost 
on that little hop. Four ships blew 
their tubes — and that bloody six-man 
experiment first of all. 

“But fifty-six ships landed, and we 
warped ’em off to Mars. And how 



MEN AGAINST THE STARS 



9 



many of those fifty-six got through?” 
His grating scream roared in the cubby- 
hole office and pounded through its 
flimsy metal door. Tallentyre’s eyes 
moved toward the door. 

DeWitt’s roar dropped to a whis- 
per as the man leaned abruptly forward, 
close to Tallentyre’s moveless, sun- 
blackened face. “Four. Four got to 
Mars, my friend. The rest were 
pretty, red firecrackers in space.” 

HE STRAIGHTENED slowly from 
the table, hunching his baggy, greasy 
uniform back over his shoulders. “I’m 
in command of this altar of human sacri- 
fices they call Luna Port. And there 
aren’t going to he any more sacrifices!” 

Tallentyre’s eyes stared into his 
steadily. “You knew men were going 
to die when you swore to take this duty, 
DeWitt,” Tallentyre said steadily. 
“And you swore to uphold your trust. 
Keep your voice down, please. We’ll 
reason with those mutineers.” 

DeWitt shook his head. His eyes 
were blazing now with a new determina- 
tion : the gray-and-black mottling of his 
face had given way to red-and-black, as 
willess despair gave way to a different 
fanticism. “No!” he roared. “We’ll 
send ’em — but we’ll send ’em back to 
Earth, where men belong. Duty? Duty 
hell! I’m not, and will not be, High 
Priest of human sacrifice. Those ships 
don't go. 

“And the spineless slugs back on 
Earth that tell ’em to do things that can’t 
be done can come and try it if they 
want. I'm going to tell those men 
right now ” 

DeWitt swung round and started to- 
ward the thin metal door with fanatic 
stretch of stride. Tallentyre leapt to 
his feet and gripped DeWitt’s arm. 

“Wait,” said Tallentyre. 

“Wait for what?” DeWitt sneered, 
and threw back his head to laugh 
harshly. 

P'or an instant Tallentyre watched 



him. Then his fist moved in an in- 
visible blur. DeWitt slumped easily, 
tiredly, to the floor under Luna’s light 
pull. 

Tallentyre stood for an instant above 
his fallen superior, the same wooden, 
moveless set to his lean, leathery face. 
Then abruptly he trembled, and fell 
awkwardly beside the fallen man to lis- 
ten for an instant to his strongly beating 
heart. 

Shuddering, he rose to his feet and 
looked desperately about the room. A 
relaxation, from without and within, 
flooded over him. His eyelids flut- 
tered; he had to bite his lip to keep it 
from twitching. He slumped back into 
the desk chair and let his arms hang 
limply down beside him, staring at the 
fallen man. 

Finally he spoke, very softly, to him- 
self. His eyes were fixed out beyond 
the double-glass window of the tiny of- 
fice. Beyond, where the space-black- 
and-silver of the spaceport blended with 
the black of space and the silver dust of 
stars. Mars, a ruby on jet velvet, lay 
over the horizon — the cruel, jagged 
horizon of Luna. “Thanks. DeWitt. 
You — you made me hold together. 

“Altar of human sacrifice ? So 

was Nevada Port once. But they 
reached the Moon. Before that — for cen- 
turies before that — the air was the Altar 
of Sacrifice. But those men that died 
in the air weren’t seeking air. They 
sought the stars beyond. They didn’t 
die on the way to the Moon. They died 
on the way to the stars. They aren’t 
dying now to reach Mars ; again they’re 
seeking the stars beyond. Someone’s al- 
ways had to ” 

He looked up abruptly. The door on 
the other side of the office creaked 
softly. The frightened young face of 
Noel Crispin, the blond girl who kept 
the office files, looked in. Her eyes 
changed as she looked at Tallentyre and 
then at DeWitt. 

“Take care of Major DeWitt,” or- 



10 



ASTOUNDING SCIENCE-FICTION 



dered Tallentyre of the moveless face. 
He slipped something from the desk 
drawer into his pocket and rose. “I've 
got to persuade the boys in the vesti- 
bule.” He crossed the office in three 
long strides. His steadiness was back 
entire when he turned the knob; he 
stepped into the outer room with an air, 
almost, of insouciance. 

FOUR MEN dressed in the rubber- 
ized canvas of spacehands stood to- 
gether in the middle of the vestibule 
floor. No doubt they had heard most, 
if not all, of what had passed in the 
office. Tallentyre looked at them. Two 
were huge and burly, tough, hard-shelled 
men who’d try anything once. Two were 
of a different breed; two who would 
do anything, at any risk, for some 
things, things in which they believed. 
The biggest, the toughest, wore a golden 
comet. The skipper. 

He wasn’t afraid now. He’d simply 
detemined the odds were bad, and he 
wasn’t having any. The other burly 
figure looked up to him; what the skip- 
per said was right with him. 

The two leaner, wiry men were 
white-faced. Nerve-shock release was 
their trouble. Like plane-pilots who’d 
lived through a crash, they were afraid 
of their fire-ships. The psychology of 
the things preyed on them. Nobody 
had ever been injured in a-rocket acci- 
dent. Nobody, ever. They landed 
sound — or simply weren’t. 

They’d landed. They couldn’t, now, 
face the thing again. But, like the 
plane-pilot who’d survived a crash, once 
started again they’d be all right. 

“In six minutes,” said Tallentyre, 
“Sixty-One takes off to Mars.” 

“We’rg not going,” said the skipper. 
“We told DeWitt that.” 

“You volunteered,” reminded Tallen- 
tyre. 

“We didn’t know what we were 
tackling. Only ten ships had tried then, 
and two had gotten through. Now we 



do know. The trip from Earth to this 
hole — not three hundred thousand miles 
— was enough. It wasn’t carelessness 
that snapped those other ships. We 
know. It was rotten tubes and rotten 
fuel. I drove a nitro-wagon in the oil 
country and felt safe. But not on this 
bugiT- Nitro’s baby’s milk to this 
stuff. Atomic hydrogen ! 

“Hu-uh. We don’t go.” He looked 
at Tallentyre coldly. He meant what 
he said, and meant to stick with it, 

“I SUPPOSE there’s no use,” said 
Tallentyre woodenly, “to say anything 
about guts and keeping a promise and 
how much you men mean to this thing. 
If you don’t go, you know, others 
won’t.” 

“Guff,” grunted the skipper, “It isn’t 
any use. 

"I call this mutiny,” Tallentyre in- 
formed him. 

“Call it whatever you damn well 
like,” growled the skipper. He looked 
down at the slighter figure of the Space- 
port official challengingly. “We don’t 
blast. And there’s no sense chucking 
your rank around, either. There’s four 
of us. And just what in hell do you 
call it when you klunk out your chief, 
eh?” 

Tallentyre’s right hand rested easily 
in the pocket of his tunic. The cold, 
gray eyes watched the big spaceman 
steadily. “You think you could get 
away with violence?” 

The big man took a step forward 
with a hainlike fist clenched before him. 
“Think, brother? Hu-uh. I k)wzv I 
can,” he said softly. “You tried it your- 
self inside there.” Without turning his 
head, he spoke to the men behind him. 
“Come on, boys. Grab this guy. And 
one of you tail for the ship and that 
gun.” 

Without relaxing his moveless, 
wooden face, Tallentyre drew his hand 
from his tunic pocket. Space volun- 
teers have to have a queer, reckless 



MEN AGAINST THE STARS 



11 



courage. With a bull roar, the giant 
catpain dove forward with outstretched 
hands, his face twisted with sudden hate. 

Tallentyre shot him between the 
eyes. The big body fell with exag- 
gerated slowness under Lunar pull. 

The roar of the heavy weapon 
drowned the sudden, soft cries of the 
other three. Tallentyre eyed them 
coldly, his face unchanged. The other 
burly man looked confused and be- 
wildered, his eyes fixed muddledly on 
the fallen leader. He looked around 
toward the lean, white-faced youth with 
red hair and startling blue eyes. The 
other spacehand was looking at him, 
too, for encouragement and decision. 
He swallowed raggedly. 

A new, terrific tension had built up. 
It reduplicated, somehow, the tension 
that had made bearable that trip from 
Earth. The redhead shrugged, and a 
wry smile twisted his lips. “I guess 
I'll go, sir.” 

Tallentyre’s wooden face relaxed. 
“Good. She’s your ship then. You’re 
the skipper. Your name? Joe? All 
right, you go in five minutes. This 
man was your rocket expert, I think? 
You won’t need him, or a replacement. 
You have a navigator, and a couple of 
hands. Go to it.” 

Five minutes later, Tallentyre 
watched Joe seat himself in the pressure 
chair in Number Sixty-One’s central 
cabin. He waved once, with a white- 
faced grin that made it seem he liked, 
but feared this command of his. Then 
the metal shutters came up over the 
rocketship’s tough windows. A smooth, 
metal shape screamed soundless fire into 
the vacuum that w'rapped Luna. The 
rushing, ruddy gas-streams scoured the 
pumice of the spaceport field. Number 
Sixty-One shot out toward Mars. 

II. 

TALLENTYRE sat motionless in 
his office, his face somehow disconnected 



from his mind, betraying no hint of 
what went on behind it. Number 
Sixty-One. It might get there. Four 
had, already. 

But if it didn’t ? None of the 

great of rocketry had gotten where they 
had hoped to land. That other Joe, that 
great Joseph — Joseph Moessner. He'd 
sought the rocket fuel that would take 
him above the stratosphere. He’d 
recognized the inadequacy of hydrogen- 
oxygen, It was too heavy. The hydro- 
gen was light enough as fuel. But for 
every 2 pounds of hydrogen, 16 pounds 
of oxygen had to be used. If only 
hydrogen would burn alope 

It would; Moessner had known that, 
and he’d done it. Hydrogen gas is H 2 
— ^two atoms combined. Monatomic 
hydrogen — atomic hydrogen, so-called 
— would burn with itself to produce 
diatomic hydrogen gas, and enormous 
heat. 

Old Moessner had been right, and 
he’d seen the way; stabilize the mon- 
atomic form in some solvent. He’d even 
found the solvent. 

But he never found the top of the 
stratosphere. For the solvent didn’t 
stabilize the frightful stuff sufficiently. 
He and his two assistants — when they’d 
made nearly twenty pounds of the 
saturated fuel — became particles almost 
as fine as hydrogen atoms themselves. 

No rocket man had ever reached the 
goal he sought, himself. But others took 
hold where Moessner so decisively left 
off. Less disastrous experiments 
showed that the combustible, oillike 
solvent Moessner had used could be 
modified just a trifle, and made more 
stable. The saturated stuff generated 
power eleven times greater, weight for 
weight, than did the oxy-hydrogen fuel. 
They had moessernol. The rest was 
trial and error — and death. 

The first passenger-carrying rocket- 
ship to pass the ■ stratosphere exploded 
fifty miles above Earth’s surface. The 



12 



ASTOUNDING SCIENCE-FICTION 



trouble, investigation showed, was in 
the metal of the tubes. In 1961 Moess- 
ner’s younger brother set out for the 
Moon. He didn’t reach his goal, but 
astromers saw the red flash of his 
explosion a scant 100 miles from the 
Lunar peaks. None of the great of 
rocketry ever quite got there. 

Others, in better craft, survived later 
landings. At first they didn’t come 

back, though. Then the World League, 
having settled decisively the question of 
international peace and trade, took in- 
terest in rocketry. 

Money, now, and Moon-trips became 
regular and generally successful. The 
new Rocket Service prepared to accept 
the challenge that must be answered — 
Mars. The Moon, with one-sixth 
Earth’s surface gravity, and with less 
than 1 /80th Earth’s mass, was obviously 
the stepping stone and refueling station 
for Mars. 

In 1996, Luna Spaceport was con- 
structed. In 1997, Major DeWitt was 
placed in charge — and Tallentyre had 
been second then. 

Twenty-eight ships that year. All 
that were left of the thirty that set out 
from Earth to Moon. Two landed on 
Mars. Horror crept down the tubes of 
the telescopes that watched from the 
airless Moon. Red firecrackers in space, 
two — three — five had gone. Then one 
landed. Then another! Then — but it 
missed. The rockets blasted in a long, 
circling trail as the radio signals faded 
away. The control mechanism was 
gone. Frantic voices that became thin 
and died. 

Firecrackers and dancing mice with 
long red tails. And no sense of direc- 
tion. 

1998 now. There were to be thirty-, 
five ships this year. Two ships had 
landed of the first thirty. DeWitt had 
stood that, silent and moody as ship 
after ship flashed bright red and van- 
ished. Or danced its brief, whirling 
waltz of death. There were fewer 



dancers now; in that year they’d done 
a lot with control mechanism. In the 
last twelve ships, there’d been no wan- 
derers. But they cracked for some 
reason no man could say. Tubes or 
fuel? Only the wreckage might have 
told, and that 

That was shining droplets spattered 
through space. 

The rebellion this day had finished 
DeWitt. It had near finished Tallen- 
tyre; only De Witt’s failure had forced 
him to defense. Tallentyre took over. 

He made entries on the log as the 
dwindling ruby of Number Sixty-One 
vanished outward in space. 



"What a cinch to run that Luna 
Port!" 

Five days out in space, Mars bound, 
the crew of Number Fifty-Nine was 
exercising the age-old privilege of able 
worhnen to belittle superior officers. 

"DeWitt! Tallentyre!” growled the 
engineer. "Who are they but a couple 
of straw-stuffed uniforms in a soft job 
they got by a hefty pull? They sit back 
there with their feet on desks, while 
we’re gunnin’ out here, out where the 
danger and the work is.” He spat into 
the waste container. 

"Oh, I don’t know,” temporized a 
spacehand with an ambition to he 
an executive. "They’ve probably got 
worries of their own.” 

Worries of their own?” echoed the 
engineer. "On that butt on- pusher’s 
work? Say, if either of them ever wor- 
ried a day of his life, I hope this ship 
blows apart right no ” 

Number Fifty-Nine was rose-red 
flame and sparklets of incandescent 
metal in that instant. 

Number Fifty-Nine was one of Tal- 
lentyre’s worries. 

CONSCIOUSNESS returned slowly 
to Major DeWitt after Tallentyre’s blow. 



MEN AGAINST THE STARS 



13 



He found himself dragged kito the rec- 
ord room, and Noel Crispin ministering 
to him, as Tallentyre had ordered. He 
sat up, pondered blackly for several 
minutes, then went into the office. With- 
out addressing his colleague, he sat be- 
fore the radio, tuned in Earth, and told 
the secretary of the Rocket Service 
Board that he was resigning, to take 
effect immediately. After some time 
there came back a tentative acceptance, 
with the additional information that a 
ship would arrive to carry him away. 
In the same message, Tallentyre was 
ordered to take command at Luna Port. 

DeWitt went to his quarters and 
locked himself in. 

Tallentyre called a pair of men from 
the machine shop, consigned the body 
of the dead rocket-skipper to them, with 
directions that it go back to Earth when 
the ship arrived for DeWitt. Returning 
to the administration office, he sat down 
before the screen that recorded telescope 
views. After some correction of angles 
and focus, he picked up a clear rectangle 
of black, starry sky. In the center hung 
a cartridge-shaped hull — the last ship to 
leave the port. 

Small in the sky beyond, a lesser 
capsule of metal was visible. 

“A ship heading back ?” muttered 
Tallentyre to himself. “More mutiny?” 

Wearily he decided to deal with the 
case as it matured. His present atten- 
tion must be concentrated on the craft 
so recently launched. 

Leaning back in his chair, he fum- 
bled the radio into operation. “Hello, 
hello,” he said. “Ship ahoy, Si.Kty- 
one !” 

“Hello, sir,” came back a voice he 
knew — Joe, whom he had appointed cap- 
tain. 

“What goes on, Joe?”' 

“.Ml well, sir. I’ll drop you a picture 
postcard from Mars.” 

“See if there are gondolas on the 
canals.” 



Laughter from the radio — healthy 
laughter. “This isn’t as bad as I thought 
it’d be, sir.” Then, in sudden alarm: 
“Hey ! Something’s going bad ! I.ooks 
like ” 

The view on the screen suddenly 
flashed into white fire, blinding the ob- 
server. At the same instant something 
roared in the radio, then broke off. Si- 
lence, while Tallentyre clasped his hands 
to his tortured eyes. The flare ebbed 
from them, and his vision returned. The 
screen showed only sky and stars. The 
ship was gone. 

“Boom!” said Noel Crispin behind 
him. “Just like the Fourth of July.” 
Her voice grew harsh, mocking. “Are 
you quite satisfied. Major Tallentyre?” 

He turned around and got to his feet. 
For months he and the girl had Ijeen 
“Nollie” and “Talley” to each other. 
But that had changed now. Her set 
face matched the fierce formality of her 
greeting, 

“Do you feel that you’ve served ypur 
gods, whatever they are?” she demanded. 
“Will that last burnt offering be sweet 
in their nostrils?” 

Tallentyre gazed at her, dumfounded. 
“What’s all this?” he asked. 

She laughed, bitterly and humorlessly. 
“I suppose that you couldn’t help knock- 
ing Major DeWitt down — in fact, it 
brought him to his senses and showed 
him that he must clear out. As for 
shooting that captain, I saw through the 
open door all that led up to it. He had 
threatened you, and shooting’s a clean 
death, anyway. He can sleep in a grave, 
back home on Earth. But those other 
three fellows!” 

She lashed Tallentyre with her con- 
temptuous gaze. He cleared his throat 
uncomfortably. On a desk at hand lay 
a pack of well-thumbed playing cards. 
He scowled at them as though they were 
a new and perplexing mechanism. Auto- 
matically he went to the desk, seated 
himself at it, and picked up the. cards. 



14 



ASTOUNDING SCIENCE-FICTION 



Still automatically, he began to lay them 
out for a game ®f patience. 

"Is all this death necessary?” asked 
Noel Crispin, her voice trembling as if 
with passionate hatred of him. "Isn’t 
Earth big enough for humanity? Isn’t 
it?” 

Tallentyre shook his head without 
looking up from the cards. "No,” he 
replied, "it isn’t. Earth never was big 
enough for humanity, not since the first 
of our ancestors lifted his eyes to heaven. 
You understood that once, Nellie.” 
"Don’t call me pet names, if you 
please. Major Tallentyre.” 

"If you didn’t understand,” he went 
on, "why did you volunteer for this serv- 
ice?” 

"Because I loved you, that’s why.” 

TALLENTYRE seemed ready to fall 
backward, chair and all. His lips moved 
soundlessly, his face grew pale. "But 

I — I never dreamed ” 

“Wait a moment. Please don’t mis- 
understand me. I don’t love you any 
more, and that’s why I can talk about 
it as if it had happened to somebody 
else. But once — oh, I worshipped you 
as a hero. I thought you were brilliant, 
brave. I thought you were handsome, 
in that neat, tight uniform. I signed 
up so as to be near you. But now !” 
Tallentyre stared at the .cards in his 
hand. “I may as well remind you,” he 
said, "that every man in every ship is 
a volunteer. Nobody is obliged to go.” 
"You got the answer to that from the 
captain in the vestibule, just before you 
shot him. Men don’t realize what they’re 
in for when they offer to make the trip. 
How many do you think would volunteer 
a second time?” Again she laughed. 
"If there ever is a second time for any 
of them, if a single man survives !” She 
leveled a finger at him, as thought it 
were the muzzle of a gun. “If you’re 
so full of fervor for this murderous 
business, why don’t you volunteer to go 



to Mars yourself?” 

“I’ve done so, half a dozen times.” 
The statement surprised Noel, and she 
let him continue. "The Board says that 
I’m needed here, in an administrative 
position. But when I leave here, it won’t 
be for home.” He glanced at the win- 
dow, whence Mars was discernible. "My 
home will be out there.” 

She shot him one final glare of al- 
most white heat, whirled around and 
fled from the room. Tallentyre resumed 
his game of patience. After a few mo- 
ments, a slight, stooped figure came 
through the door. It was Ernie, a white- 
haired old mechanic. 

"Something wrong with the radio?” 
he inquired gently. “Seems that way. 
Let me have a look. I thought I heard 
it blow out.” 

“It was tuned in on a ship that ex- 
ploded,” Tallentyre informed him. 

The slender old man shook his head 
sadly. “Too bad. Too bad.” He 
poked into the radio mechanism. “Oh, 
this isn’t serious. I’ll have everything 
fixed in a jiffy.” 

“Everything?” echoed Tallentyre. 

Spacehand O’Hara, who should have 
been watching the jet-gauges of No. 42, 
scribbled final words on the scrap of 
grubby paper he held on his knee. Then 
he surveyed his creation; 

Lost beyond power to follow or seek. 
Slain for their gallant defi — 

Their spirits were strong but their pin- 
ions were weak, 

The birds that were lost in the sky. 

Why should the eyes of a man turn aloft? 
The voices of warning chant loudly and 
oft. 

The fireside is cozy, the armchair is soft. 
Yet danger spells dare to the bold. 

To search after doom as a knight for the 
Grail, 



MEN AGAINST THE STARS 



15 



With death as a crew-mate, abhorrent 
and pale, 

To perish as small, glowing sparks on 
the trail — 

Wee stars in the black, empty cold 

Out of dead darkness and into clear 
light. 

Marking a pathway on high. 

See how they soar on a happier flight. 
The birds that were lost in the sky. 

O’Hara put his pencil to the second 
line and substituted "steadfast” for "gal- 
lant”. 

"It tells something,” he assured him- 
self. "Perhaps some editor would " 

His eyes came by chance to the jet- 
gauge. He had barely time to cry out 
at what he saw, before the explosion tore 
him and his poem and all the ship into 
small, glozving sparks on the trail. 

111 . 

SOMETHING like twenty hours 
after DeWitt’s resignation by radio, a 
short-shot rocket came from Earth, made 
a fairly good landing at Luna Port, and 
bore away the somber DeWitt, as well as 
the corpse of the captain. Twenty hours 
and a few minutes passed before a second 
craft dropped down on the field, aided 
by fall-breaking jets of gas directed 
against its bottom. From it emerged two 
sturdy men in drab, who came at once 
to the office. 

“Major Tallentyre?” said the oldest 
of the pair, a tallish man whose harsh 
eyes were not happy with what he was 
about to do. “I’m Inspector Baynes and 
this is Constable Dunlap. We’ve got 
a warrant for you.’’ 

“Warrant?’’ Tallentyre rose from his 
chair. “What kind of a warrant?’’ 

The harsh-eyed Baynes had opened 
his tunic and was drawing out a paper. 
“We’re from the World League Police. 
The warrant’s charging you with the 
murder of’’ — ^he broke off to read — “of 



Captain Sturgis Kiser, whom you killed 
on the ’’ 

“But I had to,’’ protested Tallentyre. 
“He was mutinous and threatening. I 
acted according to my duty, and in self- 
defense.” He turned toward the door 
of the record room. “Miss Crispin !” 

Noel appeared. Her level eyes re- 
garded the two officers as though she 
had been expecting them. 

“You saw the shooting,” said Tallen- 
tyre. “Tell these men what happened.” 

She still kept her eyes upon Baynes 
and Dunlap, and she spoke quietly, with- 
out expression, “Major Tallentyre shot 
and killed him.” 

“He’s admitted that,” said Baynes. 
“What were the circumstances?” 

Noel Crispin shook her blond head. 

“Nollie!” cried Tallentyre. “You 
aren’t telling the whole truth. You saw 
him defy and threaten me.” He broke 
off, for at last she looked at him, in 
hard and merciless triumph. 

Constable Dunlap took a step for- 
ward, as though to lay hands on Tallen- 
tyre. But the port commander faced 
him so fiercely as to freeze him to the 
metal floor. 

“Hold on,” snapped Tallentyre. “You 
haven’t authority, here on the Moon. 
I’ll resist arrest.” 

“Right, Major!” piped a clear old 
voice from the direction of the hall. 
White-haired Ernie, pausing on some 
errand, had stepped into the office. Both 
policemen stared truculently at him. 

“Who’s this?” grumbled Inspector 
Baynes to Noel. 

“He’s Ernie. Rocket mechanic, sec- 
ond class. What’s your last name, 
Ernie ?” 

“Moessner,” said the old fellow. “Ma- 
jor Tallentyre, stand your ground. You 
can’t let them take you — ^not when 
you’re needed here so badly.” 

Noel was looking at Ernie with wid- 
ened eyes. “You’re — ^ybu say your 

name’s Moessner?” 

“That’s right.” 



16 



ASTOUNDING SCIENCE-FICTION 



Tallentyre and the officers were 
also watching the aged mechanic. 
“Hm-m-m,” said Baynes, “that’s the 
name of the guy who invented moess- 
nerol." 

“He was my father.” 

The silence that fell was as effective 
as though it had come at the high point 
of a stage drama. Ernie Moessner, who 
had brought about that silence, broke it 
again. 

“I’m the last Moessner, folks. I’m 
getting old — so old that I was supposed 
to retire — but I hope I can die with my 
boots on, like the rest of my family.” 

His old eyes met Noel’s, and they 
glowed as palely as the heart of a rocket- 
blast. He laughed shortly. 

“You’re breaking down under the 
bloodshed, aren’t you, lady? How’d 
you feel if these men who kept dying 
were your own flesh and blood? An- 
swer me that.” 

Her lips trembled open. “I never 
knew ” 

“But I did !” cried the mechanic, toss- 
ing back the white locks from his burn- 
ing eyes. “I know how they died, and 
why. Listen !” 

EVERYONE was listening. 

“I’m seventy-six years old. My first 
memory was when my dad held me up 
on his shoulder, so that I could see a 
parade. The air was all snowy with 
paper confetti, and sitting on the folded- 
back top of the Mayor’s car was a tall 
young fellow without a hat. That was 
Charles Lindbergh, in 1927, and my 
dad said, ‘This is only the beginning, 
son.’ 

“You all know how he studied atomic 
hydrogen for a fuel, and how he was 
killed by it when he perfected it. His 
kid brother, my uncle, died flying the 
first rocket to the Moon. I was in the 
second, the successful flight — though 
why I was spared when better men were 
taken, I don’t know.” 

Baynes and Dunlap were gazing, rapt 



and abashed. Noel again attempted to 
speak. “But Ernie, others are dying 
and ” 

“I’m coming to that. Remember 
when Major Tallentyre here killed this 
mutinous captain, and made over the 
command to a chap named Joe? Like 
me, he got along without folks worry- 
ing about his last name. Well, it was 
the same as mine. Moessner.” 

“Your son!” cried Noel. 

“My son. My only son. He almost 
backed out, I guess. But he went, and 
I’m glad he went. The old prophet was 
wrong — a living dog isn’t better than 
a dead lion. I’m glad, too, that I 
sneaked out out of retirement to do 
plain greasy labor here. And one thing 
more ; everything else can crack, but the 
rockets will keep going to Mars if Major 
Tallentyre and I are the only ones to 
shove them along!” 

Noel spun around. “Talley,” she be- 
gan, “I want to say something that I 
didn’t think I ” 

But Tallentyre was gone. 

In the midst of the old man’s speech 
he had backed out into the vestibule 
and turned down the hallway to an air- 
lock. There hung space-armor, into 
which he fairly plunged, making its 
metal-mounted fabric airtight with a 
single tug of the seal-zipper. On went 
metal-shod sandals, the heavy girdle that 
supported oxygen tank and breathing 
apparatus, and the helmet, a transparent 
globe clouded against the pitiless sun- 
ray& of space. 

Up the hall rose a clamor of voices, 
a fall of excited feet. Tallentyre was 
in the airlock, through it, clanging across 
the metal face of the landing field. He 
meant to flee, but only for a while. Per- 
haps the officers would follow. Then 
he could* slip back into the unguarded 
port building, organize his defense. He 
would make the Rocket Service Board 
listen to him over the radio, exonerate 
him. Meanwhile, which way lay sanc- 
tuary? 



MEN AGAINST THE STARS 



DEEPER and deeper into the black- 
ness walked Tallentyre, half groping, 
half trusting to his memories of many 
journeys along the trail to the crag. 

Funny to feel so heavy on the Moon, 
where gravity is only one-sixth that of 
Earth. Surely it wasn’t because of Noel 
— he, Tallentyre, had never thought of 
her as a lover until she had admitted her 
own secret. Now she had turned into 
an enemy, one who would keep silent 
when a single truthful word would clear 
him of the murder charge. Better put 
her out of mind. 

Lights danced in the gloom behind 
him — those who hunted him. He made 
some degree of speed, gained the foot 
of the rock. Three thousand feet up- 
ward it soared, but he, even in armor, 
would weigh less than forty pounds 
against Moon’s feathery pull. Up the 
hewn trail he scrambled, scarcely paus- 
ing for breath until he gained the top- 
most shelf. There he felt safe in turn- 
ing on his head-lamp. Far below he saw 
the landing field, its lights undiluted and 
unrefracted. It was a gold coin on tarry 
blackness. He turned away and entered 
the observatory building. 

His glow-lamp revealed the inside of 
the dome — a metal-lined compartment, 
pierced above with a starry slit into 
which sloped the tube of the telescope 
like a gun at an embrasure. At its 
lower end the sensitized screen — even on 
the Moon, this new device had replaced 
the old reflection mirror — displayed a 
segment of the heavens. A blob of light 
showed in the center. Mars, of course. 
Tallentyre switched off his lamp again, 
in order to see more clearly. 

The image was not of Mars. That 
egg-shape could be but one thing: a 
spaceship. To judge by the direction of 
the rocket-blasts, it was heading Moon- 
ward. The same craft, Tallentyre made 
no doubt, that he had observed earlier 
as doubled about and returning along 
its track. Now it was very close in- 
deed. He judged that it would make 

AST— 2 



17 

port within an hour— within minutes, 
perhaps 

A new glow was creeping into the 
observatory. 

Spinning on his metal-shod heel, 
Tallentyre stared. A human silhouette 
paused on the threshold, a figure made 
bulky and mysterious by space-overall 
and helmet. 

This meant capture. The newcomer 
bore a gun in a holster at one side, and 
he, Tallentyre, was unarmed. But the 
gauntleted right hand did not reach for 
the weapon. Instead it beckoned to 
Tallentyre, then pointed outward and 
downward. 

“Go back to -the port,” said the ges- 
ture. 

Tallentyre lifted his own arms in 
token of surrender, but his heart was 
far from concurring. He walked across 
the floor, made to push past the other 
and step outside. Then he spun and 
sprang. His two hands clutched like 
lightning. His right caught and im- 
prisoned his discoverer’s right wrist. 
His left found and captured the auto- 
matic pistol. A moment later he pressed 
the muzzle into the midst of the stran- 
ger’s inflated jumper. Tallentyre’s 
helmet-front grated against the glass 
that covered the other’s face. He could 
see dimly — features that he recognized. 

Noel Crispin. 

Plainly she expected, him to shoot. 
He grinned scornfully, and tossed the 
gun away. It sailed out into darkness, 
over the hidden ledge and into the 
abyss. Tallentyre gave her a little shove 
across the doorsill. She moved away, 
stooping dejectedly in her clumsy armor, 
and her glowing lamp showed her the 
direction of the down trail. Another 
moment, and she was lowering herself 
out of sight. 

Alone again, Tallentyre gazed into 
the stars. That bright new gleam would 
be the incoming ship. It meant to land 
here. Then what? He, the port com- 



18 



ASTOUNDING SCIENCE-FICTION 



mander, could play hide-and-seek no 
longer. He must be on hand to receive 
those mutineers, to pass judgment upon 
them. He sighed as though in exhaus- 
tion, and said “Damn!” all to himself, 
in the little bubble of air that was con- 
fined about him in this inimensity of 
void. 

Minutes later he turned on his own 
lamp and began the descent. 

As he scrambled, alone in the empty 
dark, he thought glumly about Noel, 
then about women in general. Woman- 
kind must be considered in this whole 
great Martian adventure. It couldn’t 
be all a stag party. Sooner or later, 
the feminine angle would have to be 
introduced, made room for. What then ? 
Would women help or hinder, simplify 
or complicate? Would women even 
trust themselves in those danger-ridden 
rocketships ? 

Engineer Dague of Number Forty- 
five stared blankly at the stowaway 
whom the spacehands had just dragged 
from hiding. “You, Ethel!" 

“Me." she replied ungrammatically, 
and smiled her sauciest. “I told you 
that I’d follow you. It's Mars or bust, 
right beside you, darling." 

“You know that it’s more than an 
even chance of bust." 

“Then we’ll bust together!" 

As if in acceptance of that proposi- 
tion, the ship e.vploded around them like 
a shell. Poppy fire bloomed briefly in 
requiem. 

IV 

NOBODY CHALLENGED the port 
commander as he strode across the land- 
ing field and let himself through the lock- 
panel. He paused in the hall to unship 
his helmet. At once he heard a hub- 
bub of voices. Noel Crispin’s troubled 
soprano dominated them for an instant. 

“I found him, by a hunch — he was up 
at the observatory. I tried to signal 



to him that everything was all right, and 
to come back, but for a moment I 
thought he’d kill me. Then he almost 
pushed me down the rock.” 

“He thought you were hunting him,” 
rejoined the growl of Inspector Baynes. 
“I say once more, you ought to have 
spoken up and cleared him when he 
asked you to.” 

“Never mind scolding her, inspector,” 
chimed in Ernie Moessner, as authorita- 
tively as though he were the chairman 
of the World League instead of a sim- 
ple mechanic. “She’s a woman, and 
women have a way of changing their 
minds. The thing is to find Major Tal- 
lentyre before something happens to 
him.” 

“I’m here,” called the man they were 
seeking, and walked into the office. The 
four searchers crowded around him, but 
he silenced their questions with a quick 
gesture. 

“A ship’s coming into port,” he an- 
nounced crisply. “From Mars. Pre- 
pare to help it to land.” 

They all gasped at that, and their sur- 
prised exclamations overlapped each 
other. 

“A ship . . . From Mars . . . Com- 
ing back!” Tallentyre’s pose of official 
sternness forsook him. 

“The fools,” he groaned. “Oh, the 
utter fools! To turn around in space 
and come back here — ^mutiny ! I’ll have 
to put them under arrest, send them to 
Earth, maybe kill some of them if they 
resist. And all the time maybe they’re 
only showing good sense in not fighting 
Nature.” 

Noel’s strong little fingers dug into 
his shoulder, as though she was holding 
together his crumbling resolve. His 
own big hand went up to close upon 
hers. Then, once more the commander, 
he spoke into the house microphone. 

“Attention, machine shop !” he rasped. 
“Stand by to help approaching craft into 
port.” To Dunlap and Baynes he said, 
“There’s something for you to do. Ar- 



MEN AGAINST THE STARS 



19 



rest the crew as socn as it disembarks.” 

The two policemen nodded. They 
were good men of their trade, hardened 
to arresting and subduing law-breakers. 
Zipping tight their loosened space-over- 
ails and once more donning their hel- 
mets, they tramped out. Moessner fol- 
lowed. 

Tallentyre and Noel gazed through 
the window. The craft was settling 
down outside. Tallentyre could not 
make out its number, for it seemed to 
be mended and patched all over in a 
way he did not remember, as he checked 
over the ships in his mind. From many 
liny nozzles in the metal face of the land- 
ing field came the strong gush of steamy 
vapor. High-pressure gas jets, to break 
the descent of the ship. It paused, 
danced overhead like a ball on a foun- 
tain-spray, then came gently to rest. A 
moment later the lock-panel opened and 
two space-overalled figures emerged. 
The officers were hurrying toward them, 
hands on weapons. The four men came 
together, formed a single party, and 
passed slantwise across the field, out of 
range of the window. 

Tallentyre sighed. Noel patted his 
shoulder. After a moment, metal shoes 
rang flatly in the vestibule. The door 
opened. Four men came in, tugging at 
their helmets. 

A pudgy man disclosed his face first. 
He was ruddy and bearded, his sun-mot- 
tled face grinning. “Major Tallentyre, 
sir,” he boomed, “I don’t know whether 
you remember me or not. I’m Waddell, 
spacehand, first-class. Acting skipper 
of ” 

“You’re neither,” interrupted Tallen- 
tyre. “I put you under arrest, Waddell. 
Why didn’t you go on to Mars?” . 

Waddell looked blank. Then the grin 
reappeared and widened. “Because I’d 
been there once, sir.” 

TALLENTYRE felt himself stum- 
ble. Noel’s hands helped him to a chair 
and to sit down. He listened, compre- 



hending by degrees. 

“Yes, sir. Number Six, that ship was. 
There’s a colony there now, getting 
ready to gather up the last bunch that 
came through. You remember the or- 
ders — orbital speed, and land on Diemos. 
Photograph maps of Mars made from 
there. It worked perfectly. With the 
telephoto lenses we had regular air-maps 
of the planet. 

“There aren’t any canals, sir. But 
there is vegetation, lots of it. Spiny 
growths like cacti, and tougher’n rub- 
ber. But the pith of some of ’em makes 
a flour we can eat. 

“Most important, they throw off oxy- 
gen. There’s damn little air on Mars, 
but what there is is mostly oxygen. No 
trick at all to blow it into the ships — into 
the dome we set up from hull plates. 
And — there’s oil there. Major! Fuel!” 

“Now with that there,” Waddell’s face 
split in a broad grin, “and a gang of 
men that were all hard-boiled techni- 
cians, it wasn’t. much of a trick to set up 
some of the auxiliary-power Diesels for 
power.” 

He stopped for a while, and looked 
at Tallentyre’s seamed face. “Been a 
damned tough life you’ve had here, 
hasn’t it? Sending men out in those 
firecrackers. 

“Well, that’s gone too.” His hand 
dipped into his tunic pocket to come out 
with a nodule of blue-silvery metal. He 
tossed it to Tallentyre. “That’s the an- 
swer. That’s why our ships went 
through — and the others blew their 
tubes. We had something to work on 
that you birds didn’t. Tubes that had 
been proven. The metal changes in the 
tubes, under the long, heavy firing. The 
alloy shifts. If it crystallizes that way 
— you land. There’s another modifica- 
tion though. If it crystallizes that other 
way — you blow. That other way is cata- 
lytic on the hydrogen, that’s the trouble. 
The fuel’s all right. It’s the metal. If 
those cockeyed crystals form — they cata- 
lyze the burning. It doesn’t bum then. 



20 



ASTOUNDING SCIENCE-FICTION 



it blows. You get a flash-back, a sort 
of special explosion wave that sets off 
the whole tank. 

“We found out how to make those 
crystals every time, controlled. Old 
Six’s tubes were torn out, and the new 
ones put in. She rode back to Luna 
here as smooth as an engineer's theory. 
Somebody had to come through. We 
need more men out there. Grayson’s 
trying to set a station on Diemos. His 
figures look right, and he thinks he can 
make Callisto.” 

“Callisto!” Noel’s hand left Tallen- 
tyre’s shoulder, crept around him. Her 
arm hugged his body. Still sitting, he 
leaned against her as though to find rest. 

THIS, he knew in his heart, was the 
beginning of the triumph. Men could 
go — men had gone — ^to Mars and back. 
The labors and the sorrows had not 
been vain. Hadn’t Waddell brought 
back the secret — the secret men on Earth 
couldn’t learn — that made fleets possi- 
ble? Wasn’t Grayson, there on Mars, 
already looking on, beyond the asteroids 
to Jupiter ? 

The officers had taken off their hel- 
mets again. Tallentyre turned and 
smiled at them. “Sorry, gentlemen,’’ he 
said. “It’s a dry haul for you this time. 
Why don’t you go back to Earth — take 
Waddell here with you to make his re- 
port to the Board — and ’’ 

“Hey,’’ Waddell interrupted, “noth- 



ing doing. That ship out there is O. K. 
right now for the trip back home — Mars, 
I mean. Gimme some moessnerol and 
we’ll hop that hole like a frog-puddle. 
I’m going back there. 

“And I wouldn’t ride in one of those 
ships just out from Earth now. That’s 
the only ship in the System I’d trust to 
ride anyway. Give him the metal sam- 
ples, and the books and notes Grayson 
and Hudson fixed up. They said it’s all 
there. I’m no metallurgist — just a space- 
hand, first-class.” 

Tallentyre shook his head. A tight 
little grin tucked in the comers of his 
mouth. “I’m ordering you to Earth, 
Waddell. You make that report in per- 
son for three reasons; they need to see 
a man that’s been to Mars and back. It 
will give them courage again. We’ll fix 
the tubes on the ship that takes you 
back. And — you’ll be taking my resig- 
nation.” 

“But the ship!” Waddell protested. 
“If it doesn’t go today, sir. Mars’ll get 
away from us for nearly two years 1” 

Tallentyre rose from his chair. He 
looked smug. “Oh, the ship will start 
today. But I’ll command. I’m going to 
Mars for a change. And perhaps ” 

He broke off and looked at Noel. 
Her face became radiant. She whirled 
about as tears brimmed her eyes, but 
her words were a song. 

“I’ll start packing,” she said. “This 
can’t be a stag party forever!” 




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21 



FANTASTIC FICTION 

The other fellow's field has a tendency to look greener, of course, and that 
obscures things for us a bit, I think. The predictions made in stories, for in- 
stance. They talk about those greener, future fields. And the curious thing is 
that they go on predicting things — after they're all present and accounted for. 

We haven't built spaceships yet. We haven't atomic power. But many of 
the details that were predicted — and continue to be "predicted" in stories — 
have arrived, so quietly and naturally we fail to notice. 

In the stories of the era of 1930, no future civilization really counted unless 
it had a flexible glass that a sledge-hammer wouldn't break. Modern tech- 
nicians make it and call it "Plexiglass" or "Lucite" or methyl methacrylate 
nowadays. 

And the people wore clothes that were proof against heat and cold, would 
not stain or fade under sunlight. Spun glass fabrics is The manufacturer's 
simpler description today. 

Metals, the stories predicted, would be dyed, not painted. Quite right. 
But it isn't a prediction now, it's a fact. And steel so hard it would cut glass, 
yet so malleable it could be bent double. It was to be a wonderful alloy of a 
dozen strange elements. Wrong, that time. They do it with ordinary carbon 
steel, by a process called "austempering." Steel that's file-hard and readily 
scratches glass and yet can be bent double on itself without fracturing. (Try 
to bend an ordinary file!) 

They were to have an anesthetic, by about the year 2000, that would 
permit a man to watch his own operation. They do it now with novacaine 
injected directly into the spinal fluid. 

And gold from sea-water? No — but gold isn't a particularly useful sub- 
stance. Bromine is a lot more practical, and they do get that. Magnesium, 
too, for that matter. It's recovered directly as magnesium hydroxide, and 
sold as such in the form of milk of magnesia. (The United States consumesi 
15,000 gallons a day — largely medicinally!) There's a thriving town in Michi- 
gan that lives by reason of salt water they pump from wells. 

Fact differs from fiction in this; science-fiction presents all those things 
suddenly, fact requires a generation of improvement and change to attain the 
practical, useful article. And by that time, we have become accustomed to 
the idea, accept it so readily and naturally as to see no particular advance. 

Spaceships and atomic power to come. I think they'll come pretty much 
together— and both pretty quickly. Not because the spaceship must wait 
for atomic power, but because it has waited. No one man is going to dis- 
cover the secret of atomic power. A century from now men will almost cer- 
tainly say that one of the present great in the field was the discoverer of the 
secret of atomic power. We say today that Faraday discovered the principle 
of the electric dynamo and motor, though he never would recognize the 
modern turboalternator. 

But you can be fairly certain of this: the discoverer of the secret of 
atomic power is alive on Earth today. His papers and researches are 
appearing regularly; his name is known. But the exact handling of the princi- 
ples he's discovered — not even he knows now. 

We don't know which is his name. But we know him. He’s here today. 

The Editor. 



22 



Below— 

I Absolute! 

by 

Harry Walton 

[ Space was cold — but the Pit was infinitely 
colder — colder than Zero Absolute! 



O F course I’ve suspected it a long 
time,” muttered Hampden from 
among the instruments in the 
navigation cubby, “but it gives you a 
turn to find out beyond the shadow of 
a doubt that the chap you’ve picked out 
for a space buddy is star-struck, loony 



“I know — I know,’' murmured his 
partner, Kerry Holm, six feet of in- 
dolent Earthman, at present engaged in 
nothing more vital than a game of soli- 
taire chess. “But am I complaining? 
You mayn’t believe this. Red, but it 

scarcely shows on you ” 

“Space batty, I say,” Hampden con- 
tinued firmly. “No • sane Internickel 
man would head out this far beyond 
Pluto’s orbit. Our chances of finding 
payrock out here are nil. And our 
chances of getting a black meteor 
through us are inversely swell. And 
maybe you can afford to loaf through the 
galaxy sight-seeing, but I can’t. Espe- 
cially since we passed up that juicy mer- 
cury find a while ago ” 

Kerry Holm yawned, reached into a 
locker and drew forth a small notebook. 
He turned the metal foil pages as though 
each were a volume in itself. 

“You know, we couldn’t report that 
to International Nickel and Mining Co. 



They’d have bunged out there with a 
fleet of ore ships and mopped it up. The 
damn stuff was alive. Forget it and 
listen to this : Proxima Centauri disap- 
peared thirteen months ago. Alpha Cen- 
tauri — which, if you remember your 
high school Galaxy, is a double star — 
has cooled to invisibility.” 

“Intriguing if true, but none of our 
business,” growled Hampden, slamming 
the cubby door behind him. “So what?” 
“So certain scientists are a bit uneasy. 
Because stars don’t blink out within the 
space of a few months, as a rule. All of 
which is leading up to a little surprise 
I have for you. Can you take it ?” 

For answer Hampden shot Holm 
a scornful glance, and proceeded to set 
up the magnetic chessmen for a new 
game. 

“You see,” continued Holm, “having 
the new inter-galactic gear for the real 
high-speed work, it seemed a shame not 
to use it. So I headed for Alphy — in 
fact, we’re half way there. If you knew 
navigation, you’d have caught on. 
Where are you going?” 

“To twist our tail about and head for 
Earth,” responded Hampden bitterly, 
“before you begin biting your own ears. 
Maybe I can swap you for a student 
spacey if I beg hard enough.” 



23 
















WsSji! 



The tiny lifeboat bored on into the unutterable cold of the Pit, 
But — would its slight mass help ? 



'Hm 



24 



ASTOUNDING SCIENCE-FICTION 



He yanked open the navigation door. 
Holm reached out and neatly tripped 
him. With the agility of the space- 
trained. Hampden landed on both hands 
and was up again in an instant. 

“Sit down,” Holm ordered wearily. 
“And listen. About two years ago 
Stevensall discovered a dark spot be- 
tween us and Alpha Centauri. Of course 
there have been other dark spots ob- 
served — utterly black areas of sky, dark 
nebulae such as the ‘Coal Sack’ in the 
Milky Way. They’re usually believed 
to be masses of matter which obscure 
the light of the stars behind them.” 

“And so we’re going to investigate 
it,” burst out Hampden, “and see 
whether it had anything to do with the 
decease of two distant stars. Neither of 
which matter a molecule to you, me, 
or the Solar System in general. Craters 
of Titan!” 

“Correct but for one thing. These 
weren’t distant stars. They were our 
nearest neighbors — a mere skip of a 
little over four light-years away — and 
it seemed neighborly, having the new 
gear aboard, to pop over and see what’s 
wrong. At least, that’s what Stevensall 
and I thought. You know we were 
chummy at college.” 

“Neighborly!” exploded Hampden. 
“You pour on two weeks’ fuel running 
away from perfectly good payrock, and 
keep mum all along as though you had 
a new thorium find up your sleeve, just 
to satisfy your cursed curiosity. That,” 
he finished bitterly, “is a pal !” 

Holm shrugged, grinned knowingly, 
and curved his spine a little deeper into 
the comfortable hollow of his chair. 
Hampden sullenly began his game, but 
the redhead’s anger was already subsid- 
ing, as his partner had known it would. 

UPON THE perfect silence of their 
flight impinged the sudden, strident jan- 
gle of a warning bell. Holm was in- 
stantly on his feet, responsive as a steel 
spring, lethargy gone. 



“Shouldn’t be anything near us big 
enough to sound that signal,” he 
snapped. “Something’s up.” 

They hastened together past the quiv- 
ering needles of gravity indicators and 
magnetic detectors to the visiport in the 
nose of the ship. Holm snapped the port 
shutters aside. Keenly aware that they 
might face the certainty of disaster there, 
both stared tensely outward. Power 
having been shut off and retarding blasts 
applied by her detector mechanism, the 
ship was decelerating stiffly. For all that, 
they were prepared to leap to the con- 
trols for full reversal the instant they 
knew what menaced — and were the less 
prepared for the fact. 

For space before them was empty, 
with an emptiness not of space. A black 
meteor, or a swarm of particles, they 
were ready to face, but sight recoiled 
from the sheer vacuum of non-spatial 
darkness which gaped ahead of the ship. 
This was nothingness made tangible, a 
canyon of blackness in which the stars 
were lost, incredibly empty and hostile 
in its very negation of all things normal. 

And in the ship behind, the bell clam- 
ored furiously. Needles tremblecl in 
mute but frantic warning. The course 
indicator dipped sharply off-course. 

“We’ve arced ninety degrees,” shouted 
Holm above the din. “Left drive cor- 
rection ninety, sixty megadynes.” 

Hampden leaped to the controls and 
performed the maneuver. The Bo- 
nanza II came quivering to a halt, strain- 
ing at the power leash that tethered her. 
The high-speed field controls locked 
thus, both men repaired again to the 
visiport, to stare for minutes, word- 
lessly. 

This was no dark body blotting out 
the stellar field beyond, no long-dead 
sun hurtling its cold )vay unseen through 
the burial place of the stars, no ob- 
scuring cloud of cosmic dust. Of that 
they presently felt certain. Its outline 
against the tapestry of the stars was that 
of an enormous, perfectly circular disk, 



BELOW ABSOLUTE ! 



25 



and — although neither man would have 
admitted it — Iwth felt it possessed of 
motion within itself. It crossed Holm’s 
thought that this was an all-absorbing 
funnel draining into unknown space and 
tme, a sucking vacuum of nothingness 
suien to space as they knew it. 

“It Vings the meteor-warning, yanks 
the ship off -course, sets every gravity in- 
dicator wagging, and isn’t there when 
we look,’’ murmured Hampden softly. 
“I take it back, Kerry. I’m batty.” 

“No more than usual. There’s some- 
thing queer out there ” 

“It’s enough,” said Hampden, staring 
fixedly from the port, “to give you creeps 
and shivers.” 

His tone caused Holm to look at him 
sharply. Hampden was shivering, his 
body unconsciously tense, his breath 
white. A thin crystal glaze of con- 
densed and frozen vapor overlay the in- 
strument glasses. 

“Heat trap !” roared Holm. 

He clasped stiff fingers around con- 
trols already so cold that flesh froze 
fast to them by its own moisture, his 
knuckles white as he wrenched the ac- 
celerator over. The Bonanza II stood 
on her tail, motors blasting, and tore 
away as though space devils were after 
her. 

ONLY AFTER a period of flight that 
left the dark spot a mere disk off her 
quarter did Holm bring the ship to rest. 
Automatic thermostats and heaters had 
meanwhile brought the temperature back 
to normal, but the icy finger of death re- 
mained a vivid memory. 

“I thought heat traps were a thing of 
the past,” muttered Hampden. 

“Supposed to be.” Holm shrugged. 
“Before ships were properly insulated, 
heat traps were just one of the chances 
you took. You’d enter the atmosphere 
of a strange planet, concentrating on 
your landing and unaware that the at- 
mosphere — of ammonia or methane per- 
haps — was a lot colder than liquid air. 



Before you knew it, heat was draining 
out of your ship and you crashed as the 
result of frozen controls or frozen fingers 
— er both.” 

“But we’ve been in such atmospheres, 
in this very ship ” 

“Check. And no bad results, thanks 
to modern hull insulation. The ship is 
built to keep its heat indefinitely, even 
in an atmosphere that’s pretty close to 
absolute zero. That’s why it’s funny 
that we dropped into a heat trap — in 
empty space.” 

“Maybe,” suggested Hampden hope- 
fully, “our insulation is gone.” 

“Wrong. This ship is insulated,” ex- 
plained Holm as though lecturing a class 
of spaceys, “to guard against heat loss 
in cold atmosphere and against roasting 
the occupants when near radiating 
bodies — suns to you. But so far as 
empty space is concerned, we don’t need 
any insulation; we shouldn’t lose a de- 
gree a week out here. To explain : you 
know that the transfer of heat is always 
from the hotter body to a colder one. 
Empty space being at absolute zero — 
or nearly so — ^you might expect heat to 
leak from the ship into space. But 
space, although colder, is not a colder 
body. Space is empty of heat because 
it’s empty of matter, and for the same 
reason it can’t absorb heat from the ship. 
There are no molecules of matter in 
empty space to absorb the motion of 
heat-energy of a solid. But a cold at- 
mosphere, being a gas composed of 
material molecules, will absorb heat if 
in contact with a body hotter than itself. 
Hence the need for insulation.” 

“Maybe the Pit — the dark spot — con- 
sists of gas,” offered Hampden. 

“Even then, our insulation should 
have taken care of us. It’s rated safe to 
270°. No, whatever we hit there was 
a lot colder than that — colder than abso- 
lute zero.” 

“Nothing can be colder than absolute 
zero,” stated Hampden dogmatically. 
“But I’d feel better if we were away 



26 



ASTOUNDING SCIENCE-FICTION, 



from these parts and heading back to 
the Solar System.” 

“If that’s how you feel, O. K. It’s 
hard on Stevensall, of course. He’s said 
a lot about that business out there that 
hasn’t helped his reputation, and I hoped 
to help him out by taking observations 
while we’re here. But if that’s how you 
feel ” 

“That’s how I feel,” groaned Hamp- 
den. “But being what I am. I’ll let you 
take us back into that trap so that you 
can tell a few bearded nitwits back on 
Earth how it feels to freeze in the cause 
of science. Go ahead.” 

HOLM, grinning, stood to the con- 
trols. A moment later the Bonanza II 
was rocketing back toward the menace 
of the Pit. Both men struggled into 
space-suits which were fitted with in- 
dividual heating units. The ship’s 
emergency heating equipment was also 
cut in at maximum. 

“Can’t expect these suits to do us 
much good,” grumbled Hampden, speak- 
ing through the helmet phones, “if our 
heat leaked out right through the ship’s 
insulation. Somebody’s going to chop 
us out of the solid block, a century or 
so from now.” 

Again thermometer needles dipped 
low and gravity indicators swung to the 
mysterious attraction of the dark spot. 
Despite the tremendous heat output of 
their generators, both men felt a cold 
that penetrated rubber, steel and fabric 
alike, and their teeth chattered behind 
their helmet lenses. 

“ — have to turn back. Danger ahead,” 
Holm heard himself say. His helmet- 
phone spoke at the same instant. 

“What did you say?” he asked Hamp- 
den. 

“Same thing you did.” 

“Butting in on my wave length. Well, 
if I said what I think I did. I’m going 
melodramatic with £^e.” 

Hampden grunted. 

“You must stop or be destroyed,” 



spoke Holm’s headset. He was l«»k- 
ing at Hampden, and saw his partner’s 
lips frame the words. 

“So it’s you that’s going melo- 
dramatic,” he chuckled. “I take back 
my apology.” 

“What do you mean, me?” queried 
Hampden indignantly. “You said that!” 

“I did not.” 

“Well, I most certainly didn’t,” re- 
torted Hampden. “I saw you.” 

“It will be extremely dangerous for 
you to enter the passage,” remarked 
Holm gravely, adding at once : “I didn’t 
say that! At least, I didn’t think it. 
For Pluto’s sake, Red, what’s wrong 
with us ?” 

Hampden eyed him suspiciously. 

“If I hadn’t been watching you I 
might think you’ve been inhaling some of 
that alcoholic panther sweat we carry 
for snakebite. You are nearing — ^the 
limits of your space. Stop while you 
can.” 

So obviously were the last statements 
not Hampden’s own, that Holm reached 
almost automatically for the braking con- 
trols, a slow whistle forming on his lips. 
Abruptly he applied retarding blasts, 
jockeying the Bomnza II to a halt in 
midspace before the fathomless dark 
zone. 

“I didn’t want to say that,” chattered 
Hampden. “I — just did, somehow.” 

“You and who else? And while we're 
on the subject, if we’re near the limits 
of our space, what space is beyond?” 
asked Holm, and proceeded to answer 
his own question : “It can best be desig- 
nated as other-space. No comparison is 
possible on a physical basis, since mat- 
ter, the measuring rod of the space 
which it bends around itself, is always 
peculiar to that space and not transfer- 
able to an alien continuum. Were you 
to enter our space, you and your ship 
would be annihilated.” 

“It’s cold,” said Hampden tartly. 
“Talk sense and get us out of here. You 
■ can figure out why this cosmic north 



BELOW- 



■ABSOLUTE! 



27 



pole later on Tending to uniform 
distribution, energy flows from the 
higher level to the lower. Our universe 
is, throughout, at a far lower level of 
energy than yours. Your ship, like all 
your matter, is to us a radiant body — a 
miniature sun — whose heat is trans- 
mitted to us through the space-rupture 
which you see as a dark area of the heav- 
ens. To us this connecting passage is 
ablaze with light and heat. You appear 
to us to be living in a veritable furnace. 
We, could you see us at alt, would seem 
to dwell in eternal cold and darkness.” 

HAMPDEN’S astonishment, as he 
stopped speaking, was comical. 

"That,” chuckled Holm, “answers 
your question, even if you didn’t ask it. 
And -it means we’d better get away while 
we have some of our heat left, before 
our fuel gives out — you will be wise to 
withdraw, and will still be able to com- 
municate with us, as thought is a form 
of energy unaffected by space or matter.” 

Hampden eyed him wryly. “Part of 
that makes sense,” he muttered, much 
mystified. “About getting away, I mean. 
Let’s.” 

Holm nodded, took the controls and 
sent the ship a few thousand miles back, 
until warmth returned to their chilled 
bodies and they were able to doff the 
cumbersome space-suits. He locked the 
controls to hold the ship motionless in 
space, then stretched his length in the 
softest of the cabin chairs, yawning pro- 
digiously in a way that betokened the 
keenest interest on his part. 

"We know by now,’’ he said, “that 
something is in communication with us 
— something living in ‘other-space’. But 
why does it communicate by making us 
talk to ourselves?” 

"Because your conscious minds are 
unaccustomed to direct telepathy,” re- 
sponded Hampden as proxy for the un- 
known. “Your subconscious minds 
present no such obstacle, and readily ac- 



cept my thought, of which you know 
nothing until — quite unconsciously — you 
have translated it into your own words 
and expressed them in sound — I don’t 
like this !” finished Hampden rebel- 
liously. 

“How can your system be at a lower 
energy level — that is, colder — ^than mat- 
ter at absolute zero?” pursued Holm. 
“Matter at this temperature is said to 
lack any trace of heat.” 

“Of transferable heat,” was the reply, 
again through Hampden. “But even at 
absolute zero, matter cannot lose all its 
heat energy. Each of its atomic oscilla- 
tions possesses still one-half a quantum 
of energy, which, however, is inseparable 
from the atom itself, and therefore not 
apparent to you as heat. Your atoms 
are built to an infinitely larger world- 
scale than ours — ^their atomic oscillations 
are of correspondingly enormous energy. 
Thus, even the minimum one-half quan- 
tum of energy which your atoms pos- 
sess at absolute zero represents in our 
system an explosion of radiant energy, 
visible to us as heat and light. When 
this basic energy of your atoms flows, 
as it must, to the lower energy level of- 
fered by our universe, your matter ceases 
to exist.” 

Holm whistled softly. 

“That explains the disappearance of 
Proxima Centauri. Its atoms cooled to 
absolute zero, radiated their remaining 
basic energy, and collapsed. What, 
then, is to prevent the heat energy, or 
atomic oscillation of all matter in our 
system from flowing to yours — the whole 
transfer to end in the annihilation of all 
matter as we know it?” 

“Nothing!” was the astonishing an- 
swer, coming again through Hampden. 
“We knew that would follow the open- 
ing of the Passage. But we were un- 
willing to allow you to destroy yourself 
before the doom of your system over- 
takes you, and therefore warned you 



Save teveraleenu a pack! Try Avalon Cigarettet! Cellophane wrap. Union made. 



28 



ASTOUNDING SCIENCE-FICTION 



against entering the Passage.” 

“Just what is the Passage?” asked 
Holm. 

“An artificial rupture of the space- 
time continuums involved, which we 
were enabled to bring about by taking 
advantage of a rare cosmic occurrence — 
a super-nova, or exploding star, that 
simultaneously ruptured your space at 
a point which now marks the opposite 
end of the Passage.” 

“Nova Centauri! But that was ob- 
served years ago, at a distance of two 
million light years, whereas the Passage 
is only two years old. You waited two 
million years after the explosion!” 

“By your time measurements. But 
time also passes at different rates in your 
universe and ours. Nevertheless, we 
had long awaited such an opportunity. 
The entropy of our universe is at its 
ma.ximum, our suns burnt out, energy 
dispersed throughout our space. Only 
enrgy from an outside source, such as 
reaches us through the Passage, can save 
us.” 

“Then you’re willing to save your uni- 
verse at the cost of ours !” roared Holm. 

“SELF-PRESERVATION demands 
no less. Emotion, such asv you 
display now, is foreign to us and 
cannot move us. Your only rea- 
sonable attitude must be one of resig- 
nation, since in cold logic you cannot 
ask us to be so foolish as to surrender 
this life-giving energy of yours. Were 
we to destroy the Passage now, we might 
be unable to establish contact again in 
time to save ourselves — perhaps not be- 
fore your own sun would have burnt it- 
self out in its normal span of existence. 
Instead, its energy, transferred through 
the Passage, will rekindle six of our dead 
suns and sustain life on our worlds long 
after you and yours have perished.” 

“A pretty picture!” grated Holm. 
“The sun dead within a year or less! 
Why don’t they blast us out of our own 
universe and be done? It would amount 



to the same thing. What shall we do 
about it ?” 

“Get help from Earth, I suppose,” re- 
sponded Hampden. 

“Rubbish ! It would take us six 
months to convince the Planetary Coun- 
cil, twice that long to get into action. 
What can we do — now?” 

“The two of us? Nothing, of course. 
A thing you can’t see ” 

“ — may be vulnerable enough, if we 
only knew where, and how. Has it 
struck you that it» story doesn’t jibe?” 
Holm said thoughtfully. “It claims to 
be emotionless and thinks nothing of 
wiping out life in our universe by drain- 
ing away the energy upon which life sub- 
• sists. Yet it was anxious to keep us 
from being destroyed, and warned us to 
stay out of the Passage — zvhy? Was it 
because our entering that other-space — 
its own space-time continuum — zvould 
endanger it? 

“We know that matter and radiation 
are alike — that radiation is an attenu- 
ated state of matter, a dilution so to 
speak. Through the Passage it ean ab- 
sorb radiation. Free electrons, photons, 
even protons, are welcome. But I be- 
lieve that whole normal atoms, repre- 
senting concentrations of energy, are 
not — and it must be because atoms, with 
their internal energy intact, are bomb- 
shells of energ}' so far as that universe 
goes. No doubt we’ll go up in a puff 
if we enter infra-space — our atoms 
would disintegrate in seeking the low 
energy level normal to a universe of in- 
ffa-atoms — but they’d be super-dyna- 
mite in doing it. 

“It’s afraid of that — and, by glory, it’s 
going to be more afraid. We’ll drive 
for the Passage as though to go through. 
We’ll bluff it — or them — into wiping out 
the Passage. And they'll do it, rather 
than risk our entering their space. 
Game?” 

“No!” snarled Hampden, to Holm’s 
astonishment. “I’ll not risk my neck 
in your crazy schemes any longer. 



BELOW ABSOLUTE! 



29 



You’ve no proof at all that they’re afraid 
of us — we’d be throwing ourselves 
away.” 

“We would not,” responded Holm 
with quiet intensity. “If everything goes 
wrong — if the bluff fails to work — we 
can keep on until — ^until the ship does 
go. There’s just a chance that the atomic 
explosion would disrupt the Passage. I 
think it’s up to us to gamble on that 
chance ” 

“You think so.” Hampden backed 
away. He cowered beside the discarded 
space-suits like a cornered, desperate ani- 
mal. “You’ll do nothing of the kind 
if ” 

HIS HAND, fumbling among the ac- 
couterments of the suits, swung back 
suddenly, and flung something. A speci- 
men-hammer hurtled past Holm’s tem- 
ple. As the astonished elder spaceman 
sprang to his feet, Hampden found a 
deadlier weaq)on — a heat gun. Its beam 
crackled furiously against the metal 
bulkhead of the ship as Holm ducked be- 
hind the temporary shelter afforded by a 
cabin chair. 

“Red ! For God’s sake, what is wrong 
with you ? Are you hypnotized ?” 

“Completely,” returned Hampden. 
"We control him from other-space. 
Without danger to ourselves we shall 
compel him to destroy you both — after 
disposing of your ship so that it shall 
no longer menace us. At first we would 
have allowed you to return to your 
doomed system, but you have guessed 
too much of the truth.” 

Inexorably, the heat beam arced 
downward, blistering its path across the 
bulkhead. The metal panel-back of the 
chair glowed hotly before Holm’s face. 
He knew it would be a matter of seconds 
only before it melted through. 

The cabin chairs were fastened with 
jiffy catches, holding them firmly to the 
floor, yet permitting their removal and 
re-attachment as might be convenient. 
A quick twist of a single lever loosened 



the four catches, although the hot metal 
seared his palm painfully. Carefully, but 
with madly beating heart, Holm gauged 
the distance- to the navigation cubby 
door, the vital inches which spelled suc- 
cess or failure, life or death — immedi- 
ately for himself, eventually, perhaps, 
for his world. 

It was desperately far. Hampden, 
alert and in control of his own faculties, 
could balk the attempt Holm was con- 
sidering with deadly effect. But Hamp- 
den’s reactions, controlled by an intelli- 
gence which saw and heard through the 
Earthman’s mesmerized senses, might 
well be slower and imperfect. On this 
Holm fastened his slim hope of survival. 

With a lurch he threw himself side- 
wise, grasping the chair firmly and drag- 
ging it along as a shield, stifling the cry 
of pain which his burnt hands wrung 
from him. In that first desperate effort 
he got half way to his goal before the 
heat pencil swooped after him. He stag- 
gered to his feet, hurled the chair full 
force at Hampden, and reeled through 
the door into the navigation cubby. The 
heat beam blazed against the door even 
as he swung it shut and locked it. 

He had gained control of the Bo- 
nanza II. The bulkhead and door were 
impervious to mere heat beams, and 
Hampden could not interfere from with- 
out the cubby. But he himself. Holm 
knew, was not immune to the hypnosis 
of the intelligence beyond the Passage. 
It would shift the attack to him, and al- 
though he might resist for a time, there 
could be only one end to such a mental 
duel in which he was a mere novice. 

He roused himself from these musings 
with a start. So subtle had the sug- 
gestion been, so cleverly foisted upon him 
in the guise of his own thought rather 
than as that of an intruding and alien 
will, that he found himself almost in- 
credulous before the fact. Nevertheless, 
the mental bombardment had begim, and 
was perhaps only the first symptom of 
complete hypnotic domination such as 



30 



ASTOUNDING SCIENCE-FICTION 



had possessed Hampden. Holm won- 
dered whether he could long remain the 
victor, in possession of his own will — 
and then wondered whether even this 
passing thought was not implanted by a 
mind other than his. 

At least it was obvious that “they” — 
capable of reading mind and thought 
alike — could not be bluffed into dissolv- 
ing the Passage as Holm had first sup- 
posed. Desperate action alone might 
succeed, and he saw with cruel clarity 
that his time for action was limited. Not 
only from within his own thought, but 
from without, through his own tongue, 
the pressure of suggestion was being 
brought to bear. Despite himself he 
spoke, voicing the will of the unknown, 
telling himself that there was no cause 
for fear, that he should open the door 
and take counsel with Hampden, that 
they would be permitted to depart un- 
harmed. And, again, he knew these 
were lies, and that Hampden would burn 
him down mercilessly on sight. From 
amid the chaos of contradictory 
thoughts, he caught an urgency which 
drove him on, although insistent speech 
- — curiously at variance with his state of 
mind — fell unliurriedly from his lips as 
he made frantic preparations for what 
he must do. 

REALITY VANISHED. He seemed, 
in his operations of the 'controls, to be 
stumbling through a dream. Fatigue 
and an irrefutable sense of the unreality 
of his struggle besieged him. Had the 
working of the controls not been mechan- 
ical, burned into his brain by repeti- 
tion, he could never have finished. 

He got the ship under way and driv- 
ing with full blasts for the Passage, its 
automatic pilot set to follow the gravita- 
tional pull of the infra-universe beyond. 
Unless the manual controls were again 
cut in, the Bonanza II would hold her 
course into the dark funnel that led into 
alien space. Already it was cold in the 
navigation cubby. The ship was speedily 



losing heat — despite insulation and ther- 
mal equipment — to heat-greedy infra- 
space. 

Holm was no longer sure that he was 
alone. It seemed, sometimes, that 
Hampden was in the cubby with him. 
Again, there were voices that could have 
been only his own, pleading, command- 
ing, cajoling, threatening. In increas- 
ingly brief moments of lucid thought he 
knew that he was succumbing, but for 
the most part he was dazed, uncertain 
of himself, forgetful of the desperate 
purpose that had brought him here. 

He grasped the controls to steady him- 
self, and shook his head as though to 
clear it. Some vital part of his plan, he 
knew, he had forgotten. But he was 
unable to recall it, or to care. His flag- 
ging consciousness was now almost in- 
capable of connected thought. He saw 
his fingers tighten on the manual con- 
trols and slowly, relentlessly, moved by 
a volition no longer his own, force the 
deceleration lever over. The ship stag- 
gered with the sudden application of 
braking blasts. 

“Kerry ! Kerry, let me in !” 

The sharp urgency of Hampden’s 
voice, once more his own since the alien 
intelligence had bent its attack upon 
Holm, clanged like a tocsin through the 
mesmerism which had all but overcome 
Holm’s own will. One of those rare mo- 
ments of lucidity brought Holm sharply 
alive to the desperate reality of the situ- 
ation. The details of his plan stood forth 
starkly clear. He flung the deceleration 
lever back to neutral, returning the ship 
to the control of its automatic pilot. Ac- 
celeration flattened him against the bulk- 
head as the Bonanza II surged cruelly 
forward. Again the will of alien men- 
tality beat upon his thought. 

But the brief respite had strength- 
ened him. Braced against the terrific 
acceleration, he took an emergency 
welding unit from its safety socket, 
aimed its snout against the manual con- 
trol wiring, and pulled the release trig- 



BELOW 



•ABSOLUTE! 



31 



ger. Pale flame belched forth. Bus 
bars fused iifstantly in verdant fire, the 
control current flaring violet across a 
hundred arcs as the conductors melted 
through. The ship was under control 
of its automatic pilot — irrevocably. 

Simultaneously that alien mesmerism 
ceased, faded like the forgotten details 
of a bygone dream. Tire unknown knew, 
then, that further efforts at control 
would be useless — ^that Holm could not, 
if he wished, stay the flight of the Bo- 
ncmza 11 into the gaping funnel ahead. 
The automatic pilot held their fate, the 
fate perhaps of a Solar System, firmly 
in its steel and copper heart. Even if 
they destroyed it, the ship would con- 
tinue straight on its present course, at 
whatever speed it had meanwhile gained. 

Cold sweat dribbled into Holm’s eyes 
and froze on his cheeks. His breath 
was frosty white. The door latch stuck 
to his burned fingers as he swung the 
door open to admit Hampden. 

"Into this — quick!” urged the red- 
head. He had brought the space-suits, 
and both men donned them as quickly 
as stiff muscles would permit. To- 
gether then, they watched the circular 
cross section of the Passage widen as 
the ship plunged toward it. 

IN THE ALIEN void ahead there 
was new movement, a whorl of darkness 
wjthout shape, colorless as pitch, intangi- 
ble as space itself. They sensed, rather 
than saw, it detach itself from the par- 
ent continuum as a waterspout lifts from 
the sea, a vortex of ghastly emptiness. 

"A segment of infra-space,” muttered 
Holm. “If it hits us ” 

Momentarily it became plainer, as the 
Bonanza 11 blasted ahead and the yawn- 
ing blackness of the Passage filled the 
vision port, that the space segment would 
strike the ship. It came on as directly 
as though guiding cords drew it to the 
vessel. 

“We’re bound to hit !” groaned Holm. 
"If they can disintegrate us out here, 



before we enter the Passage, the Passage 
is safe.” 

“The life-boat ?” suggested Hamp- 
den, referring to the tiny spaceship 
cradled against the hull for use in 
emergency. 

“Too late,” muttered Holm, his eyes 
on the approaching space segment. 
"We’d never get off in time. It doesn’t 
carry enough fuel to get us back any- 
way. Great Nebulae ! There is a chance 
though !” 

He ripped open the cabinet contain- 
ing the life-boat release and firing con- 
trols. Fitted with directional rockets, 
the little ship could be released either by 
its occupants, or irom the navigation 
cubby, and shot either behind the Bo- 
nanza 11 or, should the parent ship be 
falling stern first, over the bow. No 
alien control sought to hamper him as 
he set the directional control in the latter 
position and pushed the ignition switch. 
Plainly, the unknown was depending 
upon the strange space-missile to blast 
the Earthmen out of existence, and no 
longer interested in probing their minds. 

A streak of livid flame raced over- 
head, the tiny craft’s belching exhaust 
gases purple and crimson against the 
black opacity of the Passage. With its 
own acceleration added to the momentum 
derived from the Bonanza 11, it forged 
slowly ahead of the greater ship. 

“Hope it’s — over — before we get 
there,” chattered Hampden. 

As though drawn by invisible elastic 
cords, life-boat and space segment drew 
together. They met in soundless col- 
lision a scant hundred miles ahead of 
the Bonanza 11. For an instant the lit- 
tle vessel seemed oddly transparent, a 
shimmering, phantomlike multiple image 
of itself. Green flame ballooned sud- 
denly outward from it, expanded to in- 
credible proportions like a distended, 
enormous soap bubble, and vanished 
without residue. No trace remained of 
either ship or space-segment. 

“Clean job!” grunted Holm, the salt 



32 



ASTOUNDING SCIENCE-FICTION 



tang of blood on his lips. 

“But the Passage — muttered 
Hampden. “It’s — ^holding.” 

It was true. The Passage still loomed 
before them, now blotting out the star 
field in all directions. Already they 
must be within the rim of the funnel — 
not yet in infra-space proper, but still 
hurtling toward that borderline where 
space met space, which life might not 
pass and live. And the Passage held! 
Had his guess been so far wrong. Holm 
wondered, and their effort a colossal, 
fatal blunder only? Would that alien 
intelligence dare permit the Bonanza II 
to enter the Passage, and, through it, 
infra-space? Did it hold their threat 
to be harmless, and would the ship, ex- 
ploding in other-space, destroy only it- 
self ? 

Holm wondered, and the bitter irony 
of their position struck through more 
sharply than the cold. They had played 
their cards — it remained to be seen 
whether the unknown held trumps, after 
all. Holm looked at Hampden, sturdily 
tight-lipped in expectation of death, and, 
finding nothing to say, knew that noth- 
ing needed to be said. 

BUT NOW the Passage was not the 
same. It 'was taking on motion. Like 
tlie sucking funnel of a vast whirlpool, 
its sides drew together as it rotated at 
incredible speed. It receded, shrank. 



“It’s going!’’ shouted Hampden. 

As though they were watching the 
mouth of a cannon from which they had 
been shot at terrific speed, they saw the 
Passage dwindle in the remoteness of 
space. For an instant Holm had a swift, 
vague impression of depth within its 
darkness, of dimensions unrevealed. 

Then, as they watched that closing 
of the space breach between infra-world 
and the world of men, a fierce, glad ex- 
ultation flowed through them like liquid 
warmth. Stars prickled the velvet 
blackness of familiar space. The Bo- 
nanza II sped freely through its native 
element. 

Hampden stirred, squirmed out of his 
space-suit, and eyed the damaged man- 
ual control wiring. 

“A nice mess that is,’’ he grumblcfl. 
“We’ll barely have it repaired in time 
for deceleration, when we get there ’’ 

“Get there? We’re not. headed for 
home, by a long shot. If you knew any- 
thing about navigation, you’d know that 
we’re ’’ 

“ — that we’re headed smack for Alpha 
Centauri, because that’s what the 
Passage was lined up with.’’ Hampden 
grinned knowingly. “Didn’t you say 
Alpha Centauri has cooled ? There ought 
to be some rare ore there — stuff no ex- 
pedition ever found before. And I al- 
ways did want to find out what makes 
a star tick ’’ 




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The Legion Of Time 

The second part of a great three-part 
NEW-CONCEPT Time story by 

JACK WILLIAMSON 



“Ho, Queen of Nothingness! Gyronchi has won — Jonbar is destroyed. 
We’ve found a higher crucial factor!” 



UP TO NOlVi 

EADLY antagonists, two beau- 
tiful women haunted Dennis 
Lanning. He was eighteen, in 
1927, when Lethonee first appeared to 
him in the apartment at Harz'ard that 
AST— 3 



he shared with three others: Wil Mc- 
Lan, the mathematician; Lao Meng 
Shan, the Chinese engineer; and Barry 
Halloran, all-American tackle and his 
dearest friend. 

Tragic with dread, and beautiful, 




34 



ASTOUNDING SCIENCE-FICTION 



Lethonee’s intangible image came to him 
alone, holding the great jewel of Time 
that she called the chronotron. In it she 
showed him Jonbar, her city, lying far- 
off in possible futurity. Jonbar’s des- 
tiny, she told him, and even her own, 
were in his hands. 

“Don't fly tomorrow,” she zvarned 
him. “Or Jonbar zvill be slain!” 

Lanning obeyed, because he had fallen 
in love with her vanishing image. And 
Barry Halloran zvas killed in his stead. 

Grief-stricken, Lanning left America. 
And Sorainya appeared to him, floating 
beside the rail of his ship in the tropics, 
on her golden shell of Time. Red- 
mailed warrior queen of Gyronchi, splen- 
did and alluring, she called to him to 
leap to the shell and return zmth her to 
share her throne. 

He was about to leap, when Lethonee 
came back to zvarn him. For the shell 
zvas but an image. He would have 
fallen to die in the shark-infested sea. 
Sorainya vanished, angered. And Leth- 
onee explained. 

Jonbar and Gyronchi are two conflict- 
ing possible worlds, of future probabil- 
ity. Either of them may be made real 
by the fifth-dimensional progression. 
But not both. They are fighting for sur- 
vival. And the choice of reality is in 
Tanning’s hands, Lethonee tells him. 
She and Sorainya are each beckoning 
him to carry the choice into her own hall 
of possible futurity. The choice is his — 
the outcome veiled in unresolved prob- 
ability. 

Haunted, Lanning walked bezvildered 
through the years. Lethonee guarded 
his life. Sorainya tried again to lure him 
to death. He became war correspondent, 
pilot, soldier — fighting always the right 
of might. In 1938, flying one night with 
Lao Meng Shan to defend Hankow from 
air raiders, he zvas shot down. 

As they plunged down in the flaming 
plane, dying, a queer, shining ship ap- 
peared beside them. Dead Barry Hal- 
loran was among the group of men in 



assorted military uniforms, who dragged 
them aboard! 

They wake up in the ship’s hospital, 
restored by strange doctors using the 
znysterious dynat. The others, Lanning 
learns, have been snatched from death 
in the same amazing manner. The ship, 
the Chronion, is to take them to Jonbar. 
And its captain is Wil McLan. 

Going to the bridge for information, 
Lanning finds McLan strangely aged, 
scarred from frightful torture. The ex- 
planation is interrupted, while the Chro- 
nion flashes down into a chaos of fight- 
ing battleships. It is Jutland, in 1916! 
A dying sailor is pulled aboard, rushed 
to the hospital. 

Then Wil McLan, almost voiceless, 
whispering, tells how he mastered Time, 
looked into Sorainya’s possible future 
world, and fell in love zvith her. How 
she encouraged him to build the atomic- 
powered time ship, which he finished 
in 1960. 

At once, he had set out down the geo- 
desics of the future to Gyronchi, to join 
the beautiful Sorainya. Sorainya im- 
mediately threw him into her dungeons, 
turned the Chronion over to the priests 
of the black gyrane. And laughed at 
McLan for hoping to zvin her, warrior- 
queen of Gyronchi! 

Ten years Wil McLan spent in her 
torture vaults — for he would not give 
her the secret of the time ship. At last, 
Lethonee finds him in her chronotron 
time-scanner, and helps him escape. Mc- 
Lan reaches the time ship, and then 
Jonbar. 

Now, he tells Lanning, they are or- 
ganising a Legion of Time to fight for 
Jonbar and against Gyronchi. But since 
each represents a different facet of the 
same age, they are mutually impossible, 
contradictory. Which zvill be brought 
to reality by the progression of the fifth- 
dimensional axis of Time, depends, in 
part, on Denny Lanning. Hence, each 
of the futures is fighting for his services. 
Since they are mutually exclusive, nei- 



LEGION OF TIME 



35 



ther can directly attack the latter. 

But, when Wil McLan tries to look 
at Jonbar from the clironoscope aboard 
the Chronion, it is beyond his range! 
Gyronchi has done something, in some 
time, to diminish the probability of Jon- 
bar. It is so diminished that the Chro- 
nion may never be able to reach it again! 

VIII. 

B oris BARININ came up from 
the hospital ward. Then two 
Canadians, lean silent twins 
named Isaac and Israel Enders, who 
had been taken aboard, before Canning 
left his bed, from a shell hole on the 
Western Front. And at last Duffy 
Clark, the British sailor from Jutland. 

Willingly taking the oath, they made 
twelve men under Canning. He organ- 
ized them into squads, made big, fear- 
less Emil Schorn his second in com- 
mand, and began drilling on the deck. 

There were arms, he found : a dozen 
Mauser rifles, two dozen Cuger pistols, 
four crated Maxim machine guns, sev- 
eral boxes of hand grenades, and a hun- 
dred thousand rounds of assorted am- 
munition, which McCan .had taken — 
along with a stock of food and a few 
medical supplies — from a sinking muni- 
tions ship. 

“The first precaution,” the old man 
rasped. “We located a torpedoed arms 
ship when we first came back from Jon- 
bar to collect supplies and weapons — 
and test our technique of recovery. 
Weapons from Jonbar, you see, wouldn’t 
function against targets from Gyronchi 
— mutually impossible! And men who 
had been eating food from Jonbar, in a 
raid on Gyronchi, might find themselves 
— well, hungry.” 

Canning superintended the unpacking, 
inspection, and assembly of the weap- 
ons, served out the rifles and automatics, 
assigned crews to the machine guns. 
Since McCan’s assistants from Jonbar 
would be unable to enter Gyronchi, he 



detailed Clark, Barinin, and Lao Meng 
Shan as crew for the Chronion, and him- 
self learned something of her naviga- 
tion. 

And the time ship drove steadily down 
the geodesics of Jonbar. The atomic 
convertors throbbed endlessly beneath 
the deck. Sometimes Canning relieved 
him, but Wil McLan seldom left the 
control dome. 

“The world we seek is now all but 
impossible,” he rasped. “The full power 
of the field drives us forward very 
slowly. And at any instant the geodesics 
of Jonbar may break, for they are weak 
enough already, and leave us — notime!” 

Once, in his tiny cabin aft. Canning 
woke in hiS bunk with a clear memory 
of Lethonee. Slim and tall in her long 
white robe, she had stood before him, 
holding the flaming splendor of the chro- 
notron. Despair was a shadow on her 
face, her violet eyes dark pools of pain. 

“Denny,” her urgent words rang clear 
in his memory, “come to Jonbar — or we 
are dead.” 

Canning went at once to the bridge, 
and told McLan. The old man shook 
his white head, grimly. 

“We are already doing all that can 
be done,” he said. “The geodesics of 
Jonbar are like microscopic wires drawn 
out thinner and thinner by the attenua- 
tion of probability. If the tracer loses 
them, or if they snap, Jonbar is — lost.” 

Helpless, Canning could only return 
to the drilling of his men. 

TWO WEEKS passed, by the time 
of the ship — physiological time, that 
measured by heartbeats and all bodily 
rhythms, in which the span of life moved 
relentlessly toward its end, I'egardless of 
motion backward or forward along the 
time dimension. And at last the Chro- 
nion slipped silently out of the blue, 
shimmering abyss. Canning, waiting 
eagerly on the deck, saw beneath them 
— Jonbar! 

The ship was two miles high. Yet, 



36 



ASTOUNDING SCIENCE-FICTION 



so far as his eye could reach in every 
direction, stretched that metropolis of 
futurity. Mirror-faced with polished 
metal, the majestic buildings were more 
inspiring than cathedrals in their soar- 
ing grace. With a pleasing lack of regu- 
larity, they stood far apart all across 
the green parklike valley of a broad 
placid river, and crowned the wooded 
mills beyond. Wide traffic viaducts, 
many-leveled, flowed among them, busy 
with strange, bright vehicles. Coming 
and going above the towers, great sil- 
ver teardrops swam through the air 
about the ship. 

Canning had glimpsed it once before, 
through Lethonee’s jewel. But its ma- 
jestic reality was new. The staggering 
vastness and the ordered splendor of it 
shook him with a kind of awe. Hun- 
dreds of millions, he knew, lived here, 
labored, loved, rejoiced in the happiest 
estate that mankind had ever known — 
or, he realized, he should put it, might 
ever know. And all the wonder of this 
world, the incredible fact came to him 
stunningly, was faced with absolute an- 
nihilation. 

Trembling with eagerness and dread, 
he hastened up to Wil McLan. 

“This is Jonbar!” he cried. “Then 
it’s still — safe ? And we can find Letho- 
nee?” 

The bent old man turned solemnly 
from the polished wheel, and shook his 
scarred white head. 

“We’re here,” came his grave, voice- 
less whisper. “But only the geodesic 
analyzers can measure the degree of Jon- 
bar’s probability. It hangs by a strand 
weaker than a spider’s web. Lethonee 
will doubless be at her new laboratory.” 

The Chronion was gliding swiftly 
down to a mile-high argent spire — ^that 
soared from a wooded height — propelled 
in space, McLan had explained, by the 
same special field that moved it in Time. 
A vast doorway slid open in a silvery 
wall. The little ship floated into an im- 
mense hangarlike space, crowded with 



streamlined craft. A green light beck- 
oned them to land on an empty platform. 

“This is the world we must fight to 
save,” Canning told the men. 

“Achl" rumbled Emil Schorn. “It is 
a good world, well worth fighting for.” 

Leaving the big Prussian in command, 
and warning him to be ready for instant 
action in case of emergency. Canning 
and McLan left the ship. An elevator 
in a great pillar shot them upward. 
They emerged into the cool refreshment 
of open air, amid the gay verdure of a 
terrace garden. A sliding door opened 
in a bright wall beyond. Tripping 
eagerly out of it, to meet them, came 
Lethonee. 

Instead of the long white robes in 
which Canning had always seen her, she 
wore a close-fitting dress of softly shim- 
mering, metallic blue, and a blue band 
held her dark ruddy hair. Something 
of the grave solemnity of the apparitions 
was gone. She was just a lovely, hu- 
man girl, joyously eager to see him — 
and trying, he thought, to hide a tragic 
despair. 

She came quickly to him, through the 
bright garden, and took both his hands 
in an eager grasp. And Canning felt 
a queer little shiver of joy at the warm 
reality of her touch. 

“DENNY CANNING!” she whis- 
pered. “At last you have come. I am 
so glao 

Her weary, troubled eyes went to 
scarred old Wil McLan. 

“Gyronchi has carried out some at- 
tack,” she told him gravely. “A warn- 
ing came from the dynon, and now — 
they are gone. The full power of the 
chronotron will not penetrate forward, 
beyond tonight.” 

Her voice was hushed and shaken; 
in her eyes was the shadow of doom. 

“I have been with them twenty hours 
in the laboratory. But we could discover 
nothing. Only that this is the last pos- 
sible night of Jonbar. Unless ” 



LEGION OF TIME 



37 



Her haunted eyes clung desperately 
to I^anning’s face. 

“Unle.ss the tide of probability is 
changed.” 

Wil McLan limped toward the slid- 
ing door, breathing huskily. “I’m going 
up to the laboratory.” 

Lanning lingered, and his thirsty eyes 
caught the girl's. 

“I have done all I can, there,” she 
said. “And, if this is the last day of 
Jonbar, I should like to spend an hour 
of it with you, Denny. Perhaps the only 
hour we shall ever have together.” 

“I’ll send for you, Denny, if we dis- 
cover anything,” rasped McLan. “You 
can do nothing, until — unless— we find 
what action Gyronchi has taken.” 

He turned through the sliding door. 
Alone on the terrace with Lethonee, 
Lanning was overcome with a sense of 
incredulity. He looked wonderingly at 
her grave quiet beauty, framed in the 
greenery, asking, “How can I believe 
that you aren’t real? What is the dif- 
ference between reality and such a seem- 
ing as this ?” 

“The universe of reality, determined 
by progression on the fifth axis, is sim- 
ple and complete,” the girl told him sol- 
emnly. “All the branching geodesics of 
possibility tend to pick up energy; all 
possible worlds strive for reality. But 
only one line, at each bifurcation, can 
win. All energy is withdrawn from 
those other, half-formed worlds, as the 
world lines of the victorious one are 
fixed in the fifth dimension. And it is 
as if they had never been.” 

Her white face was very sober. 

“In a manner of speaking, all the 
seeming reality of Jonbar — even I — was 
given creation by the atomic power of 
the CItronioH, bringing you down the 
geodesics. We are only an illusion of 
possibility, the reflection of what may 
be — a reflection that is doomed !” 

Abruptly, then — and Lanning knew 
that it took a desperate effort — she 



tos.sed her lovely head, and smiled. 

“But why need illusions talk of illu- 
sion?” The silver voice was almost gay. 
“Aren’t you hungry, Denny? Gather 
flowers for the table, and let us dine — 
on illusion!” 

WITH HER own hands she set a 
small table at the rail that edged the 
terrace. The huge white buds that Lan- 
ning picked bathed them in a delicate 
perfume. Beyond the rail, and a mile 
below, stretched the green parklands. 
Other silver pylons shimmered magnifi- 
cent on distant hills. The genial sun 
was setting from a serene sky, of a blue 
clarity that Lanning had never seen 
above a cky. A cool wind whisi^ered 
across the garden, in a silence of inef- 
fable peace. 

“Nothing can happen to you, or to 
Jonbar, surely,” whispered Lanning, 
sipping a glass of fragrant wine. “Per- 
fection cannot die 1” 

“But it can.” Her voice shuddered. 
“When the whole continuum is tortured 
with forces in conflict, W'ho can foretell 
the outcome?” 

Lanning caught her hand. “Letho- 
nee,” he said huskily, “for ten years of 
my life, since the first night you came 
to me, I have lived in hope of finding 
you. Now, if anything should take 



An iron grasp closed on his throat. 

The girl moved closer, shivering. 
“But we know,” came her dread-chilled 
voice, “that this is the last night of Jon- 
bar. The chronotron can discover no 
possible tomorrow!” 

The blue dusk turned to mauve and 
to purple-black. The far towers of Joti- 
bar shone like pillars of fire. And the 
roadways, sweeping through the dark 
woodlands, were broad, brilliant rivers 
of flowing light. 

Shadows filled the terrace. Some 
night-blooming shrub sent out a flood of 
intoxicating sweetness. Slow music 



38 



ASTOUNDING SCIENCE-FICTION 



came softly from somewhere below. 
Close to Lethonee, Lanning strove vainly 
to forget the torturing pressure of peril, 
sought to grasp and hold her threatened 
reality with the strength of his arms. 

Suddenly the girl’s hand stiffened in 
his, and she caught a gasping, fright- 
ened breath. 

“Greetings!” rang out a voice of 
golden mockery, “Queen of Nothing- 
ness !” 

LANNING looked up, startled. 
Above the terrace, floating as he had 
seen it before, was a long, shallow, 
golden shell. Sorainya stood in it, 
proudly erect in a long-sleeved shirt and 
kilt of woven scarlet mail. Beside her 
stood a tall, angular man — gaunt-faced, 
with dark, sullen eyes and cruel, heavy 
lips — robed to his feet in dull, stiff black. 

Glarath, the latter must be, Lanning 
knew, high priest of the strange gyrane. 
His sunken black eyes smouldered with 
a malevolent flame. But Sorainya’s 
greenish glance held a mocking amuse- 
ment. 

“Best taste her kisses while you may, 
Denny Lanning,” she taunted. “For we 
have found a higher crucial factor. I 
didn’t need you, Denny Lanning, after 
all— Glarath, with the gyrane, took the 
place I offered you. And now the strug- 
gle is won !” 

The black-haired hand of the priest 
clutched possessively at her strong, bare 
arm. He snarled some guttural, unin- 
telligible word, and his dark eyes burned 
at Lanning, terrible with hate. 

Sorainya whipped out the thin golden 
needle of her sword, and drew it in a 
flashing arc above the dark city. And 
she leaned into the black priest’s arms. 

“Farewell, Denny Lanning,” pealed 
the mockery of her shout. “And take 
warning! All Jonbar — and the phan- 
tom in your arms — will be gone before 
the wind. We have come to watch the 
end.” 



With the hand that held the sword, 
she flung him a derisive kiss. Her foot 
touched some control, and the shell 
soared upward and vanished in the sky 
of night. 

White-faced, shaken, Lethonee was on 
her feet. “Come to the laboratory!” 
Her voice was dry with alarm. “I 
hadn’t meant to stay so long.” 

Lanning followed her to the sliding 
door. Beyond it, he glimpsed a vast 
tower room. At endless tables, hun- 
dreds of men and women were busy 
with mathematical instruments: calcu- 
lating machines, planimeters, integrators, 
and harmonic analyzers. Beyond was 
a huge bulwark of intricate mechanism, 
resembling a magnified version of a 
product integraph Lanning had seen at 
the Massachusetts Tech, capable of solv- 
ing problems too complex for the hu- 
man brain. Beyond, in a far wing, ped- 
estals supported scores of huge crystals 
like the chronotron screen Lanning had 
seen in the hands of Lethonee. Swift 
activity hummed everywhere. 

BEFORE they had entered, however, 
Wil McLan came to meet them at a 
frantic, limping run. His white hair was 
wild, a desperate urgency strained his 
haggard face. 

“Back, Denny!” It was a rasping, 
whispered scream. “Get back aboard. 
Jonbar is — going!” 

Lanning swept Lethonee with him into 
the elevator. McLan tumbled after them. 
The cage dropped toward the hangar. 
Lanning held the girl in quivering arms. 

“Darling ” he whispered. “You 

are coming with us !” 

She shook her tragic head. “No, 
Denny. I am part of Jonbar.” She 
clung to him, desperately. 

The elevator stopped. Lanning caught 
Lethonee’s hand, and they ran out across 
the hangar, toward the Chronion. 
Ahead, Lanning saw a welcoming 
throng of gay-clad people gathered about 



LEGION OF TIME 



39 



the time sliip, tossing flowers to the deck. 
Dapper Jean Querard stood by the rail, 
making a speech. 

But a curious dim, silver light was 
beginning to steal over the crowd and 
the teardrop ships and the walls, as if 
they were beginning to dissolve in a sil- 
ver mist. Only the Chronion remained 
clear, real. 

I.anning sprinted. ' 

“Hurry!” he sobbed. “Darling ” 

But Lethonee’s fingers were gone 
from his hand. He stopped, and saw 
her still beside him — but dim as a ghost. 
Frantically, her shadow beckoned him 
to go on. He tried to catch her up in 
his arms. But she faded from his grasp. 
She was gone. 

McLan had passed him. Fanning 
caught a sobbing breath, and fought a 

blinding pain, and stumbled on But 

what was the use, demanded bitter 
agony, if Lethonee was gone? 

Ever)fi:hing but the Chronion was dim 
now. Beginning to flicker like the blue 
abysm in which the time ship rode. He 
saw Wil McLan scramble up a ladder. 
But the floor was giving way. His run- 
ning feet sank deep, as if its metal had 
been soft snow 

And it was gone. Fanning caught 
his breath, and clutched out desperately, 
and fell. The last wraith of the build- 
ing flickered away. Jonbar was gone. 
Beneath, under the empty night, lay only 
a featureless dark plain. And Fanning 
was plunging unchecked toward it, a 
cold wind screaming up about him. 

A malicious golden voice pealed : 
“Farewell !” 

And Fanning saw the long yellow 
shell flash by, Sorainya and Glarath ly- 
ing together on its cushions. He fell 
past them, and the icy wind took his 
breath. 

Then the Chronion shot down beside 
him. The yellow ray flared from her 
crystal gun, and drew him headlong to 
the rail. And Barry Halloran, laughing, 
hauled him safely aboard. 



IX. 

THE SHIP, in a moment, was back 
in her timeless blue abyss, driving 
through the ceaseless flicker of possi- 
bility. Fanning hastened to join Wil 
McLan beneath the crystal dome, and 
asked a breathless, tortured question: 
“Lethonee is gone — dead?” 

The sunken, haunted eyes looked at 
him solemnly. 

“Not dead,” rasped Wil McLan, “for 
she was never born. Jonbar was merely 
a faint probability of future time, which 
we illuminated with the power of the 
temporal ray. This last triumph of So- 
rainya has — eliminated the probability. 
The reflection, therefore, vanished.” 
“Sorainya 1” gasped Fanning. “What 
has she done?” He clutched a twisted 
arm. “Did you discover anything?” 
The white head nodded. 

“In the last hour, before the laboratory 

was obliterated ” 

“You did!” Fanning quivered with 
impatience. “What was it ?” 

“A moment, my boy,” came the whis- 
per. “It seems that the priests of the 
gyrane must have learned more from 
the study of the Chronion than I thought. 
Sorainya’s golden shell, as you know, is 
merely an image projected by the tem- 
poral ray. But now Glarath has built 
an actual time ship!” 

“Eh?” muttered Fanning. 

“It is similar to the Chronion, but 
heavier and armored. And it carries a 
horde of Sorainya’s fighting ants.” 
“And they used that, against Jonbar?” 
“They went into the past,” said the 
voiceless man. “Back to the turning 
point of f)robability. They found some- 
thing there — it must have been a small 
material object, although we failed to 
glimpse it with the chronotrons — which 
was the very foundation of Jonbar. Us- 
ing the power of the gyrane, they 
wrenched the thing, whatever it was, out 
of its place in time. The resulting warp 
of the geodesics extinguished the possi- 



40 



ASTOUNDING SCIENCE-FICTION 




bility of Jonbar.” 

“What did they do with the thing?” 
“They kept it concealed, so that we 
could get no sight of it with the tem- 
poral ray. And they carried it back to 
Gyronchi. It is guarded, there, in So- 




















Il 








' u 











L-'.’F . 


11 






V’ 





rainya’s fortress.” 

“Guarded?” Lanning echoed. His 
fingers twisted together in a sudden 
agony of hope, and his eyes searched 
McLan’s wealed face. “Then if we took 
it — ” he gasped desperately, “brought 



it back — would that help Jonbar?” 
Urgently, he seized McLan’s thin shoul- 
der. “Can — can anything bring back 
Lethonee ?” 

The haggard white head moved in a 
tiny nod. 



LEGION OF TIME 



41 












*\? s;?. - > 1 • 



“Yes,” came his slow, hoarse whis- 
per. “If we can recover the object; if 
we can discover where they found it, 
in Space and Time ; if we can put it back 
there ; if we can prevent Gyronchi from 
disturbing it again until the turning point 






The Bickering mist of the Time 
abyss vanished, and before them 
shown — Jonbar! 

has passed — then Jonbar will again be 
possible.” 

Lanning’s fist smashed into his palm. 
“Then we must do that!” 

“Yes,” whispered Wil Mcl.an, very 
softly, “we must do that.” A solemn 
light came into his hollow eyes, and his 
broken hand softly touched Lanning’s 
arm. “Yes, this is the task for which 
we gathered your Legion, Denny — al- 
though the details have not been clear 
until now.” 

“Then,” Lanning cried eagerly, “let's 
go!” 

“Now we are retracing the faded geo- 



42 



ASTOUNDING SCIENCE-FICTION 



desics of Jonbar,” the old man told him, 
“back toward your own time. There 
we can pick up the branching world 
lines of Gyronchi, and follow them for- 
ward again, to seek that guarded ob- 
ject.” 

“And let Sorainya beware !” 

BUT McLAN caught Lanning’s arm 
again, with a firmer grasp. 

“I must warn you, Denny,” he whis- 
pered. “Don’t be too hopeful. We’ve 
need of every bit of caution. The odds 
are all against us. Fourteen men, we 
must fight all Gyronchi, Sorainya and 
her battle ants, the gyrane, Glarath and 
his ship of Time. 

“And Jonbar can help us no farther. 
Even the surgeons we had aboard van- 
ished with all the rest. Twice seven — 
against a whole world of futurity.” 

“But we’ll take ’em on!” muttered 
Banning, grimly. 

“We’ll try ” 

An old slumberous fire burned again 
in McLan’s haunted eyes, and his 
seamed face drew into a grim and rigid 
mask. His whispering voice fell 
hoarsely. 

“It’s thirty years since I saw So- 
rainya.” He spoke, it seemed, to him- 
self. Broken fingers touched the worn 
silver tube that hung from his throat. 
“A glorious flame that lured me across 
the gulf of Time. I — I loved her.” 

Tear burst into his hollow eyes, and 
his gulp was a startling little sound. 
Banning looked away, out of the dome, 
and heard nothing for a full minute. 

“Fifteen years — ” came the slow whis- 
per at last. “Fifteen years since I found 
that she is a demon. Bying, treacherous, 
savagely cruel, as near a female devil as 
could be. And still — beautiful. Some- 
how, glorious !” Some deep-hidden 
agony throbbed in his whisper. 

“I hate Sorainya!” It was a savage 
rush. “She tricked me, tortured me, 

maimed me forever ! She — she ” 

Something seemed to choke him. At 



last came the voiceless sigh: “But still 
— for all her hateful evil — could I kill 
Sorainya ? Could any man ?” 

Banning’s fists were knotted into hard 
balls. “I have seen her,” he gasped 
hoarsely. “And I don’t know.” Then 
he strode suddenly across the room and 
back, moved by a tearing agony. His 
voice quavered thin and high: “But 

we’ve got to — if we can! To .save Jon- 
bar.” 

“Yes,” whispered the man she had 
broken. “If we can.” 

A week, ship’s time, had passed when 
the dials registered 1921. 

“Here,” Wil McBan told Banning, 
“the last broken geodesic of Jonbar joins 
reality. In this year, it is just possible, 
we may find the apex of that cone of 
probability formed when Glarath took 
the object out of time — if we ever come 
back from Gyronchi.” 

The Chronion came briefly out of her 
blue, flickering bourne, high above the 
brilliant blue Pacific, where the circle 
of an atoll glistened green and white 
about a pale lagoon. In an instant they 
were gone again, back through the blur 
of multitudinous possibility, down the 
geodesic track of Gyronchi. 

Banning and Schorn were drilling the 
men “daily” on the deck. But the first 
brush with Gyronchi came as an utter 
surprise. It was jaunty little Jean Que- 
rard, leaping from his place in the line, 
who screamed the warning. “Grand 
Dieu! A ship from hell !” 

Turning from the little rank, as he 
pointed. Banning saw a black shadow in 
the shimmering blue abyss. It van- 
ished, reappeared, flickered, was sud- 
denly real. A great black vessel. 

THREE TIMES the Chronion’s 
length, it was thick and massive. Its 
ends were two immense square plates, 
which shone with the same greenish 
glow as the Chronion’s polar disks. 
Black muzzles frowned from ports in 
her side, and the high bulwarked deck 



LEGION OF TIME 



43 



was crowded with a black-armored horde 
of Sorainya’s gigantic ants, aglitter with 
golden axes and thick, crimson guns. 

On a lofty quarter-deck, Lanning 
thought he glimpsed the black-robed an- 
gularity of Glarath. But it disappeared. 
And, a moment later, a dazzling white 
beam jetted from a projecting tube. A 
two-foot section of the Chronion’s rail 
turned blindly incandescent and incon- 
tinently exploded, flinging out searing 
drops of molten metal. 

“Lie flat!” ordered Lanning. “Fire 
at will!” He shouted to Schorn: “Get 
the Maxims going !” 

But what — the question racked him — 
could lead avail against that beam of 
ter-rible energy? Rifles and machine 
guns crackled as he ran to the speaking 
tube that communicated with McLan. 
“Wil !” he yelled. “What can we do?” 
The white sword flashed again be- 
hind him. And Israel Enders, kneeling 
to fire, collapsed in a smoking- heap. 
There was one dreadful scream, agony- 
thinned. And then bright flame burst 
up from the pile of burnt cloth and 
seared flesh and fused metal that had 
been a man. 

With an answering scream that was 
the echo of his brother’s, Isaac Enders 
fed a belt of ammunition into his Maxini, 
and sprayed lead at the far rank of 
hyper-ants who were leveling their red- 
metal guns. Projectiles spattered the 
Chronion. 

The hoarse, tortured whisper came 
back from Wil McLan. “The Chro- 
nion’s no fighting ship. We can’t meet 
the ray of the gyrane.” 

“What then?” It was a gasp of agony. 
“They’ve got Israel Enders, already 



“Outrun them!” came the voiceless 
husking. “The only hope. The Chro- 
nion’s lighter. Hold them off. And 
maybe ” 

Blinded by blood from a wound on 
his forehead, the Austrian, Arneth, was 
fumbling with his jammed Maxim. 



Lanning ran to take the gun, seared his 
fingers freeing the hot action, and trained 
it on the port from which the ray 
had flashed. Perhaps, if it came from 
some sort of projector that could be 
broken ” 

He hammered hot lead at the black- 
armored ship. It was drifting nearer. 
Another volley from the ants screamed 
above. The white ray flashed again. 
One of the Maxims exploded, spattered 
fused metal. Willie Rand, behind it, 
rolled ^loaning on the deck, beating with 
blackened hands at his flaming garments. 

This couldn’t go on ! Shuddering, 
Lanning fed another belt into his smok- 
ing gun. A few of the great ants had 
fallen. But the battle was hopeless. He 
listened. Was the throb beneath the 
deck a little swifter? 

The great black ship was close when 
his gun clattered again. Swinging their 
golden axes, the mighty ants lined the 
rail. Were they preparing to board? 
Lanning tilted up the Maxim, to rake 
them. 

A thick black tube crept down, 
stopped in line with him. His breath 
caught. It was time for that flaming 
ray. A stabbing, blinding flash 

BUT THE TIME SHIP had flick- 
ered, like a shadow of black. And it 
was gone in the shimmering abyss. 
Dazzled, reeling, Lanning left his hot 
gun and stumbled to the speaking tube. 

“Wil?” he called, shakily. 

“We’ve outrun them, Denny,” came 
the voiceless rasp. “Though it took our 
full field potential. We can keep a lit- 
tle ahead, along the time dimension. 
But they’ll be back to Gyronchi ahead 
of us, by a seeming paradox, to warn 
that we are coming. 

“What are our casualties?” 

Lanning turned to survey the littered 
deck. The tall, grim-faced Canadian 
was on his knees beside the smoking 
remains of his brother, sobbing. Barry 
Halloran was dressing Von Arneth’s 



44 



ASTOUNDING SCIENCE-FICTION 



wound. And Willie Rand, blackened, 
his clothing still smoking, was groping 
his way about the deck, cursing in a 
soft, weary monotone. Lanning saw his 
eyes, and chilled to a shock of horror. 
For, staring wide and blank from his 
red-seared face, they were cooked white 
from the ray, blinded. 

“Israel Enders dead,” he reported to 
McLan, in a sick voice. “Arneth 
wounded. Rand blind. And one Maxim 
destroyed. That terrible ray ” 

“That was the gyrane,” rasped Mc- 
Lan. “And but a hint of what the gy- 
rane can do. The odds are all against 
us, Denny. We must avoid another 
battle — if we can. But now that they 
are warned ” 

The whisper faded, on a note of tired 
despair. 

Wrapped in a sheet, to which was 
pinned a tiny Canadian flag and the sil- 
ver star of Jonbar, the remains of Israel 
Enders and his fused rifle were con- 
signed to the shimmering gulf of Time 
— ^where, McLan said, having the ve- 
locity of the ship, they would drift on 
into ultimate futurity. 

The deck was cleared, the broken rail 
mended, the guns cleaned and repaired. 
Atomic converters throbbing swiftly, 
polar plates shining green, the Chronion 
plunged on down the track of probabil- 
ity, toward Gyrbnchi. 

Erich von Arneth came up from the 
hospital, with a new grimness on his lean 
dark face and a livid white scar across 
his forehead. 

Asking for a Mauser whose lock was 
broken, Willie Rand sat for long hours 
on the deck, bandaged head bowed, whet- 
ting the gleaming bayonet and testing 
its keenness with his thumb. 

On the bridge, Lanning and Wil Mc- 
Lan peered for long hours into the crys- 
tal block of the chronoscope, using its 
searching temporal ray to scan Gyronchi, 
seeking an opportune moment to check 
the time ship, for the raid. Some strange 
force, however, made it impossible to 



look actually into Sorainya’s mighty cita- 
del, to find the object they sought to 
recover. 

“Another application of the gyrane,” 
rasped Wil McLan. “An interfering 
sub-etheric field, set up about the metal 
walls, that damps out the temporal ra- 
diation.” A stern light glinted in his 
hollow eyes. “But I know Sorainya’s 
fortress,” he whispered grimly. “With 
Lethonee’s aid, planning that escape, I 
memorized every inch of it.” 

His broken fingers drew maps and 
plans. He and Lanning and Schorn 
pored over them, hour after hour. 

“It must be a sudden strike,” he 
husked, “with the hour well-chosen. A 
moment lost — a wasted step — may mean 
disaster. The great strong room, where 
Sorainya keeps her treasure, is in the 
eastern tower. It is reached only by 
an elevator, through a trap door in the 
floor of Sorainya’s own apartments. 
And the great hall outside, through 
which you must go, is guarded always 
by scores of ants.” 

And at last Wil McLan spun the shin- 
ing wheel and tapped a key, to stop the 
time ship in Gyronchi. 

X. 

IT WAS the somber dusk of a cloudy 
day when the Chronion first paused in 
the land that Lanning had seen in the 
crystal screen of the chronoscope. The 
tiny fields, the broad river dully silver 
in the twilight, sprawling miserable vil- 
lages — and a blackened, barren patch 
where one had stood. The twin hills 
beyond, bearing the temple of the gyrane, 
with that awful vortex of black still fun- 
neling out into space above its squat and 
somber colonnades. And Sorainya’s 
citadel. , 

Standing on the deck, Lanning 
scanned the fortress through powerful 
binoculars. Mountainous, frowning pile 
of eternal crimson metal, ancestral fast- 
ness of Sorainya’s warrior dynasty — he 



LEGION OF TIME 



45 



knew from the chronoscope — -for half a 
thousand years. Scores of the black- 
armored ants, agleani with the gold and 
scarlet of their weapons, were marching 
in sentry duty along the lofty battle- 
ments. And Lanning saw, mounted can- 
nonlike upon the walls, a dozen of the 
thick black tubes that projected the 
deadly ray of the gyrane. 

“Gott im Himmel!” rumbled Emil 
Schorn at his side, awed. “Der thing 
we must recover is in that castle, nein? 
It looks a verdammt stubborn nut to 
crack !” 

“It is,” said Lanning. “One slip, and 
we are lost. There must be no slip.” 
He handed the glasses to the big Prus- 
sian. “We have only paused here to 
look over the grotind by daylight,” he 
swiftly explained. “We are to land 
after midnight on that ledge that breaks 
the north precipice — see it?” 

“Ja!” 

“Sorainya herself will then be gone 
to visit Glarath in his temple — so we 
saw in the chronoscope. And perhaps 
at that hour her guards will not be too 
alert. Our landing party must climb to 
the little balcony above, where the skele- 
ton hangs ” 

“Ach, Gott! A dizzy climb!” 

“The little door on the balcony gives 
into the dungeons. Wil McLan has the 
keys he carved there, for his escape. 
We’ll enter through the dungeons, and 
try to reach the great hall above. Is the 
plan all clear?” 

"Ja,” he rumbled. “Clear as death.” 

Lanning waved his arm to Wil Mc- 
Lan, in his crystal dome, and the mote 
of the Chronion flashed again into her 
shimmering gulf. 

The landing party gathered on the 
foredeck. Including Lanning and 
Schorn, it numbered eight men. A grim, 
silent little band — save for Barry Hal- 
loran, who tried to make them join in 
his roaring chant of “Jonbar!” 

Isaac Enders and Von Arneth packed 
two of the Maxims, Cresto and Court- 



ney-Pharr were burdened with the fifty- 
pound tripods. The others were laden 
with climbing ropes, rifles, grenades, and 
ammunition for the Maxims. 

Boris Barinin set up the remaining 
gun to guard the ship. And blinded 
Willie Rand sat silently beside him. 
breathing white cigarette smoke and 
whetting at the bayonet of his broken 
gun. 

The Chronion plunged again into the 
blackness of a wet midnight. The over- 
whelming mass of Sorainya’s citadel was 
a vague shadow in the clouds as the 
time ship slipped silently down to the 
narrow, lofty ledge. A cold rain driz- 
zled on the deck, and a bitter wind 
howled about the unseen battlements 
above. 

Noiseless as a shadow, the Chronion 
settled among the gnarled and stunted 
brush that clung to the ledge. Limping 
down from his bridge, Wil McLan 
handed Lanning the three white keys 
that he had carved from human bone. 

“This is the balcony door,” came his 
voiceless rasp. “The master key. And 
the inside gate. But I have none for 
the strong room — you must find another 
way.” His broken hand gripped claw- 
like on Tanning’s arm. “I’ve told you 
all I can, Denny.” The whisper shud- 
dered. “You’ll pass through the prison 
where I lay for ten years — where we 
may all rot, if you fail. Don’t fail!” 

Lanning grasped the quivering, 
twisted shoulder. 

“We can’t fall— Jonbar.”- 

BURDENED with Mauser, coiled 
rope, and a hamper of grenades, Lan- 
ning led the way over the rail and up 
the precipitous cliff. The mossy rock 
was slippery with mist. Wet cold 
pierced him, numbing. The wind tugged 
at him with icy, treacherous hands. In 
the darkness he could see nothing save 
bulking vague shadows; he had to fum- 
ble for the way. 

Knives of granite cut his fingers, and 



46 



ASTOUNDING SCIENCE-FICTION 



damp cold deadened them. Once he 
slipped, and clawed at the sharp rock 
to catch himself, scraping flesh away. 
An age-long instant, heart still, he hung 
by the snapping fingers of one hand. 

But he recovered himself, and climbed 
on. He came at last to a stout little 
oak, well anchored in a crevice, which 
he had marked through the binoculars. 
He knotted a rope to it, tested its 
strength, and dropped the coil to the 
men below. 

He climbed again. A wild gust of 
wind tore at him. The rain, in bigger, 
colder drops, drenched his numb body. 
Pale lightning flashed once above, and 
he chilled with dread that it should re- 
veal them. 

He fastened another rope about a 
projecting spur of rock, dropped it, and 
climbed again. Stiff, trembling with 
physical and nervous fatigue, he came 
at last to the narrow rugged ledge where 
the precipice of stone joined the sheer, 
unscalable precipice of crimson metal. 
Wedging his bayonet, stakelike, in a 
fissure, he anchored another rope, and 
then began to inch his way along the 
ledge. 

Then he heard a stifled scream be- 
neath. A long silence. Something 
crashed, faintly, far below. 

Shuddering, Lanning waited, listen- 
ing. The storm moaned dismally about 
the battlements, still hundreds of feet 
above. There was no alarm. On hands 
and knees, he crept onward. 

“Ach, Gott!" came a hushed rumbling. 
"This verdammt blackness — it would 
blind der deffil !” 

And Emil Schorn came swarming up 
the rope behind him, and followed along 
the ledge. They came to the little pro- 
jecting balcony of rusted red metal. A 
gallows arm projected above it. A rope 
hung through an open trap door, and 
beneath it, swaying in the wind, hung 
white bones in jangling chains. 

As Lanning tried the thin bone key 
in the metal door, the other men joined 



them, one by one, breathless, dripping, 
shivering with cold — all sar'e the Aus- 
trian, Von Arneth. 

“Madre de dies!” shuddered the 
Spanish flyer, Cresto. “He fell past me, 
screaming. He must have splashed, at 
the foot of the mountain ! Cabron ! It 
leaves us but one Maxim.” 

The massive plate of the door slid 
aside, and a fetid breath came out of 
Sorainya’s dungeons. The stench of 
unwashed human misery, of human 
waste and mouldering human flesh, min- 
gled with the suffocating acrid pungence 
of the great ants. Clenching his jaw 
against the sickness in his stomach, Lan- 
ning led the seven forward. 

At first he could see no light in the 
dungeons. He led the way by touch 
alone through the narrow, rock-hewn 
passages, counting his steps and fum- 
bling for the memorized turns. But 
presently he could see a little, by a phos- 
phorescence of decaying slime that 
patched the walls and floors. 

Beyond the bars of cells he glimpsed 
abject human creatures, maimed, 
blinded, livid with wounds of torture. 
The bones of the dead, sometimes shin- 
ing with a cold, blue luminescent rot, 
lay still chained in the same cells with 
the living. 

A DREADFUL silence filled most of 
the prison. But from one cell came an 
agonized screaming, paper-thin from a 
raw throat, repeated with a maddening 
monotony. Glancing through a barred 
door, as he passed, Lanning saw a 
woman stretched out in chains on the 
floor. A crystal vessel swung back and 
forth, above her, pendulumlike. And 
drops of cold green fire fell from it, 
one by one, upon her naked flesh. With 
each spattering, corrosive drop, she 
writhed against the chains, and shrieked 
again. 

The half-consumed body, Lanning 
thought, might once have been beauti- 
ful. Could this have been some rival 



LEGION OF TIME 



47 



of Sorainya’s? A cold hate turned him 
rigid, and quickened his step. A muf- 
fled shot echoed behind him, and the 
screaming stopped. 

"Mon caeur!” whispered little Jean 
Querard. “She shall suffer no more.” 

In another cell was a great squeaking 
and thumping commotion. And Lan- 
ning glimpsed huge, sleek rats battling 
over a body in chains, newly dead, or 
dying. 

Once, beyond, that situation was re- 
versed. A sightless, famished wretch 
had bitten his own wrist, to let a few 
drops of blood flow upon the floor. He 
crouched there, listening, and snatched 
again and again, blindly, with fettered 
hands, at the great wary rats that came 
to his bait. 

“My word !” gasped the British flyer, 
Courtney-Pharr. “When we meet that 
fascinatin’ she-devil, she’ll account for 
all this. Rather!” 

Panning stopped, at a turning, and 
called back a soft warning: “Ready, 

men !” 

With a little jingle of their weapons, 
two of Sorainya’s warrior-insects came 
down the corridor. Hypertrophied ants, 
walking erect on two angular limbs, 
eight feet tall. Their great eyes gleamed 
lambent in the darkness, strange jewels 
of evil fire. 

“Bayonets !” whispered Panning. “No 
noise.” 

But his own bayonet had been left 
fcack on the precipice to hold the rope. 
He clubbed his rifle, to lead the rush, 
swung it down to pulp a compound eye. 
Taken by surprise, the monsters reeled 
back, snatching with strange claws for 
their weapons. 

The ants were mute. But little red 
boxes, clamped to their heads, might. 
Panning thought, he communicators. A 
black limb was fumbling at one of them. 
He snapped down the rifle in a second 
hasty blow, crushed it flat between 
stubby antennae. 

Ugly, powerful mandibles seized the 



Mauser’s butt, sheared through the hard 
wood. And a mighty golden battle-axe 
came hissing down. Panning parried at 
it with the barrel of the broken gun, but 
the flat of its blade grazed his head, 
flung him down into fire-veined bladc- 
ness. 

He lay on the floor, dazed and nerve- 
less. Red agony splintered his temple. 
Yet he retained a curious detached 
awareness. He could see the weird feet 
stamping about in front of his face, on 
the faintly glowing slime. The reek of 
formic acid stung his nostrils, burning 
out the nauseating effluvium of the cells. 
The ants fought silently, but their limbs 
and chitinous armor made odd little 
clicks and creaks. 

THE MEN had swept forward after 
Panning, with bayonets set. They were 
dwarfed by the four-armed monsters. 
And, in a momenp the advantage of 
surprise was gone. 

"Vive Jonbarl” sobbed Cresto. And 
the dexterous sweep of his blade com- 
pletely decapitated the nearer ant. In- 
sect physiology was not so quickly van- 
quished, however. The headless thing 
remained for a moment upright, and the 
great yellow axe struck again, bit deep 
into the Spaniard’s skull. 

"Dios " 

His gaunt body lurched automatically 
forward, and came down on top of the 
ant’s, driving the bayonet deep into the 
armored thorax. 

Emil Schorn’s weapon had driven into 
the monster Panning had half-stunned, 
with a force that carried it over back- 
ward. Barry Halloran followed him, 
with a ripping lunge. The battle was 
ended. 

Barry helped Panning to his feet, and 
he stood a moment swaying, fighting 
for control of his body. Courtney-Pharr 
produced a silver flask of brandy, 
splashed its liquid fire on his temple, 
gave him a gulp of it. His spinning 
head cleared. He seized Cresto’s rifle. 



48 



ASTOUNDING SCIENCE-FICTION 



jerked the bayonet from the great ant’s 
body, and staggered on, following Emil 
Schorn. 

An outstretched hand and a whis- 
pered warning stopped him in the dark- 
ness. Greenish light shone through mas- 
sive bars ahead. He crept up beside 
Schorn, and looked into a long guard 
room. 

A dozen of the ants were lounging in 
the room, and the air was thick with 
their acid smell. Several, at a low table, 
were sucking at sponges in basins of 
some red liquid. Two couples were 
preening one another’s glistening black 
bodies. One, in a corner, was mysteri- 
ously busy with a complex-looking board 
vaguely like an abacus. A few were pol- 
ishing battle-axes and thick, red guns. 

“No hope for silence, now,” Lanning 
breathed to Schorn. “We’ll take ’em 
with all we’ve got !” 

He was working with the bone key 
at the lock. Issac Enders and Court- 
ney-Pharr, beyond him, were setting up 
the Maxim on its tripod, the muzzle 
peering through the bars. The lock 
snapped silently. He nodded to Schorn, 
and began to swing the door slowly 
open. 

The compound eyes of the farther ant 
glittered as they moved, and the black 
claws froze on the abacus. An electric 
silence crackled in the guard room. 

“Now !” Lanning shouted. 

"Allons!” echoed little Jean Querard. 
“With you, mon capitaine!” 

The Maxim thundered suddenly, fill- 
ing the room with blue smoke and whin- 
ing, ricocheting lead. Lanning flung 
Querard and Barry Halloran diagonally 
across the room, to stop the other en- 
trance. 

The great ants retained a hymenop- 
terous vitality. Even when riddled with 
bullets they did not immediately die. 
Under the Maxim’s deadly hail, they 
abandoned their occupations, seized 
weapons, and came charging in two 
groups at the entrance. 



Courtney-Pharr slammed the prison 
gate to protect Enders and his weapon, 
defending the lock with his bayonet. 
And the monsters in front of the Maxim 
began at last to slump and topple. 

The defense of the other door, how- 
ever, was less successful. Lanning and 
his companions met the charging crea- 
tures with tossed grenades and a blaze 
of rifle fire. Out of seven, two were 
blown to fragments by the bombs, and 
one rnore crippled. Four of them came 
on, with axes swinging, to meet the bayo- 
nets. The cripple fell back, to load and 
fire his clumsy gun. It coughed once, 
and then a burst from the machine gun 
dropped the ant. 

But little Jean Querard was stagger- 
ing forward, with blood spurting from 
his breast. Knees trembling, he held 
himself upright for a moment, propped 
his rifle so that a charging ant impaled 
itself on the bayonet. Loud and clear 
his voice rang out : “Allons! Jonbar!” 

He slipped down quietly to lie beside 
the dying insect. 

Lanning checked one of the ants with 
three quick shots to its head, ripped open 
its armored thorax with a lunge that 
flung it back, helpless. Schorn stopped 
another. But the third caught the bar- 
rel of Halloran’s gun a ringing blow with 
its axe, leapt on top of him, and clawed 
its way past. 

Lanning snapped another charge of 
ammunition into his Mauser, and fired 
after it. But it dropped forward and 
scuttled out of sight, at a six-limbed, 
atavistic run. 

Barry Halloran staggered back to his 
feet, his shirt torn off and blood drip- 
ping from a long red mark across his 
breast and shoulder, where a mandible 
had raked him. 

“Sorry, Denny !” he gasped. “I tried 
to hold the line !” 

“That’s all right, guy,” panted Lan- 
ning, running back to open the door 
again for Pharr and Enders with their 
guns. 



LEGION OF TIME 



49 



But already, somewhere ahead, a great 
alarm gong was throbbing out a deep 
and brazen-throated warning that 
moaned and sighed and shuddered 
through all the long halls of Sorainya’s 
citadel. 

XI. 

THE FIVE survivors of the raiding 
party, Pharr and Enders, Halloran and 
Schorn and Panning, running with their 
burden of weapons, came up a long 
winding flight of steps, and through a 
small door, into the end of Sorainya’s 
ceremonial hall, where the warning gong 
was booming. 

It was the largest room that Panning 
had ever seen. Great square pillars of 
black soared up against the red metal 
walls, and between them stood colossal 
statues in yellow gold — no doubt So- 
rainya’s warlike ancestors, for all were 
armed and armored. 

The reflected light, poured down from 
the lofty crimson vault, had a redness, 
that gave the air almost the quality of 
blood. Most of the floor was bare. Far 
toward the other end stood a tall pillar 
of shimmering splendor — the diamond 
throne that once Sorainya had offered 
Panning. As treacherously, perhaps, as 
she had also offered it to Wil McPan. 

From a chain, beside the throne, hung 
the alarm gong — a forty-foot disk of 
scarlet metal. Tiny in that great hall, 
two of the warrior ants were furiously 
beating its moaning curve. And a little 
army of them — thirty. Panning esti- 
mated — came rushing down the hall. 
“Quick!” he rapped. “The Maxim!” 
He helped set up the hot machine 
gun, gasping to Schorn, “We’ve got to 
get through — and back! The door to 
Sorainya’s own apartments is behind the 
throne. The strong room is reached 
through a trap door, beside her bed — 
quick! The tembs!” 

“Devils!” Isaac Enders’ lean face 
was a hard, bitter mask as he started an 
ammunition belt into the Maxim, 
AST— 4 



dropped down behind it. “They won’t 
forget you, Israel !” 

The gun jetted flame, sweeping the 
line of ants. Beside him, Pharr and 
Barry Halloran blazed away with rifles. 
Panning and Schorn dumped hampers 
of hand grenades on the floor, and 
stooped over them, snapping out the 
safety pins and hurling them into the 
rank of £ints. 

The ^mts fired a volley, as they came. 
The thick, crimson guns were single- 
shot weapons, of heavy calibre but lim- 
ited range. Most of the bullets went 
wide, spattering on the metal wall. But 
one struck Enders, drilling a great black 
hole in his forehead. 

He lurched’ upright, behind the 
Maxim. His long, gaunt arms spread 
wide, A curious expression of shocked, 
incredulous eagerness lit his stern face 
for an instant, until it was drowned in 
a gush of blood. His voice pealed out, 
in a joyous ringing shout — “Israel!” 

He slid forward, and lay shuddering 
across the gun. 

Courtney- Pharr tossed his body away, 
and resumed the fire. 

It took the ants a long while to come 
down the hall. Or time, measured only 
by the sequence of events, seemed curi- 
ously extended. Panning had space to 
snatch a breath of this clean air, so re- 
freshing after the stench of the prison. 
He wondered how, without key or com- 
bination, they could break open the 
strong room — if they won to its door. 
And how soon, after this alarm, So- 
rainya herself might return from the 
temple, with more of her kothrin, to 
block the retreat, 

A FEW ef the ants, riddled with lead 
from rifles and Maxim, had time to 
slump and fall. A few more, running 
heedless over the tossed grenades, were 
hurled mangled into the air. But most 
of them came on, converging toward the 
door, clubbing crimson guns, spinning 
yellow battle-axes. 



50 



ASTOUNDING SCIENCE-FICTION 



The four men waited in a line across 
the doorway, the Maxim beating its 
deadly roll. Schorn flung his last gre- 
nade when the black rank was a dozen 
yards away and snatched his bayonet to 
meet the charge. Saving two of his 
bombs, Lanning leveled his rifle to guard 
the machine gun, sent bullets probing to 
seek some vital organ. 

Three of the foremost monsters 
slumped and fell. But the rest flowed 
over them in a tide of death. Diabolic 
monsters, fantastic in black, great eyes 
glittering redly evil in the bloody light, 
golden axes singing. 

Lanning’s Mauser snapped, empty. 
He lunged, with the bayonet, ripped 
open one armored thorax. But the 
golden blade of another monster rang 
against the rifle, tore it from his numbed 
fingers. The club of a scarlet gun, at 
the same instant, struck his shoulder 
with a sledge of paralyzing agony, hurled 
him backward against the metal wall. 

One arm was tingling, nerveless. He 
groped with his left hand for the Luger 
at his belt, surged to his knees, sent lead 
tearing upward through armored, acid- 
reeking bodies. 

Savage mandibles seized and tore 
away the rifle of Emil Schom, and the 
bull-like Prussian went down beneath 
the rush of two giant ants. They leapt 
on top of the drumming Maxim. Great 
black jaws seized the bare, -blond head 
of Courtney- Pharr. 

The gun abruptly ceased to fire, and 
in the breathless scrap of silence the 
crushing of his skull made an odd, sick- 
ening little sound. 

“Fight ’em !’’ Barry Halloran was 
singing out. “Fight ’em !’’ 

Furiously, with his bayonet, the big 
red-headed tackle fell upon the two mon- 
sters sprawled over the silent machine 
gun and the Briton’s decapitated body. 

The Luger was empty again. Lan- 
ning dropped it, groped for his rifle on 
the floor, and surged up to meet the sec- 
ond rank of ants. If he could hold them 



for a moment, give Barry a chanc;e to 
recover the Maxim 

The weird, mute giants pressed down 
on him. But his arm had come to life 
again. And he had learned a deadly 
technique: a lunge that ripped the black 
thorax upward, then a deep, twisting 
thrust, to right and left, that tore vital 
organs. 

Yellow axes were hissing at him. But 
jet-armored monsters were piled before 
the doorway, now, in a sort of barricade. 
And the floor was slippery with reeking 
life-fluids, so that strange claws slid and 
scratched for balance. Lanning evaded 
the blows — lunged, and lunged again. 

Behind him, Barry had finished one 
monster with the bayonet. But his blade 
snapped off in the armor of the other. 
He snatched out his Luger, pumped lead 
into the black body. But it sprang upon 
him, clubbed him down with the flat of 
a golden axe, sprawled inert on top of 
his body. 

Alone against the ants, Lanning 
thrust and ripped and parried. He laid 
one monster on top of the barricade, 
and another, and a third. Then his own 
foot slipped in the slime. Great mandi- 
bles gripped the wavering bayonet, 
twisted and snapped it off. 

He tried to club the gun. But black 
claws ripped it from his hands. Three 
great ants leapt upon him, bore him 
down. His own gun crashed against his 
head. He slipped to the floor, beneath 
the ants, sobbing, “Lethonee! I tried 



The kothrin were clambering over the 
barrier of dead. Heedless claws 
scratched him. He fought for strength 
to rise, fight again. But his numbed 
body would not respond. Jonbar still 
was doomed. And, for him, would it be 
Sorainya’s dungeons ? 

THE LOUD TATTOO of the 
Maxim was a wholly incredible sound. 
Lanning in his daze thought at first it 
must be a dream. But the reeking body 



LEGION OF TIME 



51 



of a great ant slipped down across him. 
He twisted his head with a savage ef- 
fort and saw Emil Schorn. 

The big Prussian had once gone 
down, beneath the ants. His bull-like 
body was nearly naked, shredded, red 
with dripping blood. But he was on his 
feet again, swaying, his blue eyes flam- 
ing with a terrible light. 

‘‘Heil, Jonbar!” he was roaring. 
"Ach, Thor! Dcr tag of Valhalla!” 

He started the last belt into the 
Maxim, and came forward again, hold- 
ing it in his anns, firing it like a rifle 
— a terrific feat, even for such a giant 
as he. 

The remaining ants came leaping at 
him, and he met them with a hail of 
death. One by one, they slumped and 
fell. A great, golden axe was hurled 
across the barricade. Its blade cut deep 
into his naked breast, and fell. And a 
flood of foaming red rushed out. 

But still the German stood upright, 
leaning against the shattering recoil of 
the gun, sweeping it back and forth. At 
last it was empty, and he dropped it 
from seared hands. Wide and fixed, his 
blue eyes watched the last ant stagger 
and fall. 

“Jonbar !” his deep voice rumbled. 
“Vberalles! Ja " 

Like a red and massive pillar falling, 
he toppled down beside the red-hot 
Maxim. For a little space there was a 
strange hushed silence in the Cyclopean 
crimson hall of Sorainya’s citadel, dis- 
turbed only by the faint sorrowful re- 
verberation that still throbbed from the 
mighty gong. And the golden colossi, 
in their panoplies of war, looked grimly 
down upon the peace that follows death. 

A little life, however, was coming 
back into Fanning’s battered body. He 
twisted, and began to push at the great 
ant that had fallen across his legs. A 
sudden throbbing eagerness lent him 
strength. For Schorn had opened the 
way to the strong room. There might 



still be time, before the alarm blocked 
escape 

But Barry Halloran was the first on 
his feet. Fanning had supposed him 
dead beneath the ant that brought him 
down. But he heard an incoherent, 
muffled shout — “Fight ’em ! Fight ! 
Hold that line!” It changed. “Eh! 

Where ? Denny! Oh, Denny, can 

you hear me?” 

“Barry !” 

The big tackle came stalking toward 
him, through the dead, his naked torso 
crimson almost as Schorn’s. He 
dragged the dead ant from Fanning’s - 
legs, and Fanning sat up, clenching his 
teeth against the pain in his head. A 
flood of dizzy blackness came over him, 
and the next he knew Halloran was 
pressing Courtney-Pharr’s silver flask to 
his lips. He gulped the searing brandy. 

“Make it, Denny?” 

Fanning stood up, reeling. A great 
anvil of agony rang at the back of his 
head. His vision blurred. The long 
red hall spun and tilted, and the golden 
colossi were marching down it, to de- 
fend Sorainya’s diamond throne. 

“Le’s go,” his voice came fuzzy and 
thick. “Mils’ get that thing. Get back 
to the ship. Before Sorainya comes! 
First, the two grenades — ^key to the 
strong room.” 

BARRY HALLORAN found the two 
bombs he had saved, and then started 
to pick up the hot weight of the Maxim. 
But Fanning told him that the ammu- 
nition was gone. He snatched up a rifle, 
and seized Fanning’s arm. They 
started, at a weary, stumbling run, down 
the colossal red-lit hall. 

Fanning staggered, at first, and only 
Barry’s grasp kept him from falling. 
But his vision cleared slowly, and the 
pain began to ebb from his head. 

It was an interminable way, past the 
frowning yellow giants and the soaring 
pillars of black, down to the lofty dia- 
mond splendor of Sorainya’s throne. But 



52 



ASTOUNDING SCIENCE-FICTION 



they ran at last beneath the undying 
sigh of the mighty gong, and passed the 
throne. 

Beyond was a great arched doorway, 
curtained with black. They pushed 
through the heavy drapes, and came into 
the queen’s private chambers. Lanning 
did not pause to catalog the splendor of 
that vista of vast connecting rooms. But 
he saw the shimmer of immense crystal 
mirrors; the gleam of delicate statuary, 
ivory and gold; the glitter of immense 
jeweled caskets; the silken luxury of 
great couches and divans. 

Sorainya’s bed, hewn from a colossal 
block of sapphire crystal, and canopied 
with jewel-sewn silk, shone like a sec- 
ond throne at the end of that vista of 
barbaric magnificence. Lanning and 
Halloran ran panting toward it, trail- 
ing drops of blood across shimmering 
inlaid floors. 

Lanning ripped back a wide, deep- 
piled rug beside the bed. In the floor 
he found the fine dark line that marked 
the edge of a well-fitted door, and, in 
the center of that, a smaller square. 

Barry Halloran used his bayonet to 
pry out the central block, while Lanning 
unscrewed the detonator cylinders from 
the two bombs. Beneath the block was 
revealed a long keyhole. Lanning 
poured the two ounces of high explosive 
from each grenade into the little square 
depression, let it run down into the lock. 
He thrust one detonator into the key- 
hole, with the safety fuse projecting. 
Barry came dragging a great jeweled 
coffer of red metal from the foot of the 
bed, reckless of the scarred floor, pushed 
it over the lock to hold in the force of 
the charge. Lanning took the rifle, put 
a bullet into the percussion cap. They 
stepped quickly behind the bed. 

The floor quivered to the shattering 
blast. Glittering fragments of the burst 
coffer rocketed to the lofty ceiling. Jew- 
els, exquisite toilet articles and shat- 
tered jars of cosmetic, scraps of silk and 
fur fell in a rain of splendor. 



They ran back around the sapphire 
bed. A blackened hole yawned in the 
floor. A tough sheet of red metal had 
burst jaggedly upward. Lanning 
reached his arm through to manipulate 
hot bolts and tumblers. 

The square section of the floor 
dropped suddenly, elevatorlike. Hal- 
loran, after a startled instant, stepped 
upon it with Lanning. And they were 
lowered swiftly into the strong room. 

IT WAS A vast space, square and 
windowless. The concealed lights which 
sprang on, as they descended, burned 
on hoarded treasure. Great shimmering 
stacks of silver and gold ingots, mys- 
terious piled coffers, great slabs of un- 
worked synthetic crystal, sapphire, em- 
erald, ruby, and diamond. Statuary, 
paintings, strange mechanisms and in- 
struments, tapestries, books and manu- 
script — all the precious relics of the past. 
And, most curious of all, a long row of 
tall crystal blocks, in which, like flies in 
amber, were embedded oddly lifelike hu- 
man forms — the armored originals of 
the golden colossi above. This was not 
only the treasury but the mausoleum of 
Sorainya’s dynasty. 

“Ye gods!’’ murmured Barry Hal- 
loran, blinking, forgetful of his wounds. 
“The old girl is one collector! This 
junk is worth — worth more money than 
there is ! King Midas would turn 
green !’’ 

Lanning's jaw went white. 

“I saw her once — collecting!’’ he mut- 
tered bitterly. “She slaughtered a whole 
village, because the people couldn’t pay 
their taxes — when she had all this!’’ 

The dropping platform touched the 
floor. 

“We’re looking for a little black 
brick,” Lanning said swiftly. “They 
covered the thing with a black cement, 
to hide it from the chronoscope.” Shud- 
dering to a little helpless, trapped feel- 
ing, he looked back up at the square 
door. “And hurry 1 We’ve been a long 



LEGION OF TIME 



53 



time, and that gong would wake the 
dead. Sorainya’Il be here, soon.” 

‘‘.Sure thing!” muttered Halloran. 
”It’s a long way back, through that 
prison and down the cliff to the ship.” 
They began a frantic search for the 
small black brick, breaking open coffers 
of jewels, and shaking out chests of 
silks and furs. It was Barry Halloran 
who found the little ebon rectangle, 
tossed carelessly into the litter of a 
cracked pottery jar that had seemed to 
serve as a waste basket. 

“That’s it!” Lanning gasped. “Let’s 
get out !” 

They leapt back upon the platform. 
Lanning tapped a button on the floor be- 
side it, and it lifted silently. His red 
hands trembling with a wondering awe, 
Halloran handed the heavy little brick 
to Lanning. 

“What could it be?” he whispered. 
“So small and yet so important!” 
Lanning looked down at the glazed 
black surface that hid the object stolen 
from the past : the object whose position 
meant life or death to Gyronchi and 
Jonbar. He shook his battered head. 

“I don’t know — but listen!” 

For their heads had risen again into 
the queen’s bedchamber, and he heard 
far-off a monstrous brazen clang like 
the closing valves of a metal gate, the 



far tinkle of weapons, and the clear, tiny 
peal of a woman’s anger-heightened 
voice. His strength went out, and cold 
dread ached in every bone. 

“Sorainya!” he sobbed. “She’s com- 
ing back !” 

They scrambled up to the floor, with- 
out waiting for the rising platform to 
come level, and ran desperately through 
the empty glitter of the vast apartments 
of the queen, back the way they had 
come. 

They passed the black hangings. Once 
more they came into the lofty, red-lit 
immensity of the ceremonial hall, where 
the goldfen colossi still towered, frown- 
ing, between the columns of black. 
Again they ran beneath the whispering 
gong, beside the high diamond throne. 
And there, under the moaning disk, they 
halted in cold despair. 

For a black horde of the kothrin, gi- 
gantic four-anned figures tiny in the 
distance, were pouring into the hall. 
Running gracefully ahead to lead them, 
flashing in her red-mailed splendor, 
came the warrior queen. 

Lanning turned to look at Barry’s 
crimon, stricken face, and read the des- 
perate question there. Wearily, he shook 
his head. 

“She’s cut us off!” he groaned. 
“There’s no way out ” 



TO BE CONCLUDED. 




A venison 
steak J 
drink of C 
Mint Springs 
Will make a man feel 
Like he*s richer than 



PROOF 



Change to MINT SPRINGS -m 
And KEEP the Change ^ 

GlenmoreDistilleriesConlficorporttcd 
Louisville— Owensboro, Kentucky 



advtrtimment «• net intended to offer ateoholie heverages for sate or detirerp in any etaU or eMMNitmtty whore the 
mdoertieing, eaU or uee thereof m ueUoMtfuL . 



THE GREAT EYE 



by 

R. DeWitt Miller 



A science article discussing the aims and 
limitations of the 200** Mt. Palomar telescope 



M an may be defined as a two- 
legged animal surrounded by 
question marks. The advance 
of science, and therefore of civilization, 
has resulted from the progressive shov- 
ing back of those question marks. In- 
side the question marks man may ra- 
tionally govern his fate. 

The recession of the question marks 
is not steady. Every once in a while 
science makes a “big push” and gains a 
lot of ground. At the present time sci- 
entists at Mt. Palomar, California, are 
making ready for what may be the big- 
gest push of this century. 

Some three to six years from now the 
dome of an observatory will slide back 
and man will push back those question 
marks by 400,000,000 light-years. The 
gigantic 200-inch reflecting telescope, 
now being ground at the California In- 
stitute of Technology, will penetrate at 
least four times farther into space than 
any instrument ever constructed on the 
Earth. 

In fact, the 200-inch telescope repre- 
sents the highest technical achievement 
of human science. Twenty years of re- 
search and over a decade of the most 
painstakingly accurate construction ever 
attempted will have gone into its build- 
ing. The human race has thumbed its 
nose at its natural limitations and made 
a supreme effort to see, not what is be- 
yond the next hill, but what is beyond 
the misty patch of the farthest nebula 
— and yet even that is not as important 



as one good photograph of a minor heav- 
enly body some 34,000,000 miles away, 
which is the ruby color of blood. But 
let’s get in a little groundwork before 
we discuss the possibilities of obtaining 
an answer to that greatest question 
mark. 

The Mt. Palomar telescope is of the 
reflecting rather than the refracting type 
— a huge mirror, ground to a parabolic 
curve, is used to collect many times the 
light which can enter the unaided hu- 
man eye and to focus it at a single point. 
A parabolic curve is used because it will 
bring parallel rays of light to a sharp 
focus. The grinding of this tricky parab- 
ola is one of the most difficult prob- 
lems in the construction of the Mt. 
Palomar reflector. 

After the light has been focused by 
the mirror, the image is magnified by 
the eyepiece. An eyepiece of a reflect- 
ing telescope functions exactly as does 
a microscope. In other words, it mag- 
nifies the image produced by the mirror. 

There is a theoretical limit to this 
magnification. Due to the unavoidable 
residue of error left after the most pains- 
taking work and to technicalities of op- 
tics, the maximum possible magnifica- 
tion of the eyepiece is about 100 
diameters per inch of the diameter of 
the mirror. In practice, however, the 
theoretical limit isn’t even approximated, 
as will be seen. 

The 200-inch telescope would then 
have a theoretical limit of 20,000 diam- 



55 




One of the possible optical-system set-ups for the 200" Mt. Palomar tele- 
scope. This one explains the presence of the hole in the center of the huge 
mirror. Since the lesser mirrors, lenses, etc. are comparatively easy and 
cheap to make, several complete systems of auxiliary apparatus will be 
provided. The small convex mirror may be replaced by a diagonal mirror 
which throws the image to one side of the tube, out through the hollow axis 
of the supporting members ( not shown above ) and thence through a train 
of optical apparatus to an immobile, massive, and hence highly accurate 
spectrometer in a room below. Or camera and observing equipment may be 
mounted in place of the small convex mirror and used directly. The Great 
Eye itself may be used to supply gathered radiation to hundreds of different 
set-ups in dozens of different ways. 



eters. Could such theoretical power be 
employed, the Moon would be brought 
within an apparent distance of twelve 
miles of the Earth. As the mountain 
ranges, cones, and craters on the Moon’s 
surface vary in elevation almost that 
distance, some idea of the terrific mag- 
nification theoretically possible on the 
200-inch reflector can be seen. 

For instance, Venus, at its closest to 



the Earth, would be brought within an 
apparent distance of 1300 miles. A per- 
son unfamiliar with astronomical ob- 
servations, basing his opinion on ter- 
restrial experience, may well ask : 
“What can you see at 1300 miles?” 

To give a correct answer to such a 
question, two factors must be borne in 
mind: first, the relative size of terres- 
trial and astronomical objects, and sec- 



56 



ASTOUNDING SCIENCE-FICTION 



ond, the limitation imposed on vision 
by the atmospheric conditions prevail- 
ing on Earth. 

The mightiest thing on this planet is 
probably the Himalaya mountains, 
capped by the icy crest of Mt. Everest. 
Yet the height of Everest is less than 
one seven-hundredth the diameter of 
the Moon. Astronomers are looking at 
planets and stars, not trying to see the 
girl in the next apartment house. 

EVEN SO, no one knows the poten- 
tialities of the human eye. After all, 
no man’s eye, naked or aided by a com- 
plex system of lens and mirror, has ever 
escaped the dead weight of atmospheric 
interference. We live in an eternal fog 
— in fact, we are able to live only be- 
cause of that fog. But the fog forever 
bars the human eye from using to the 
maximum its abilities to see beyond. 

Sometimes, however, hints are given 
of what might be expected should that 
atmospheric blanket be escaped. Trained 
observers at the Mount Wilson Ob- 
servatory — which houses the 100-inch 
Hooker telescope — can see the flag pole 
on top of a hotel in the town of Santa 
Monica. This is a distance of twenty- 
five miles. Of course, such moments of 
relatively perfect vision are fleeting, last- 
ing at most a few minutes on two or 
three days in a year. But they are a 
glimpse of what we could expect if we 
could, in some way, completely escape 
atmospheric distortion and haze. 

But such an escape is impossible (?) 
—remember that question mark a few 
minutes. The giant eye now being con- 
structed for Mt. Palomar can no more 
escape the atmospheric conditions exist- 
ing at that point on the surface of the 
Earth, than could an ancient Indian’s 
eyes, staring in wonder at the stars. 

But all science is a struggle within 
limits. Let us see what possibilities we 
may reasonably hope for. How far will 
the 200-inch telescope push back the 
question marks? 



Experience with the 100-inch tele- 
scope at Mount Wilson — now the largest 
in existence — shows that the maximum 
magnification under good atmo.spheric 
conditions is 1200 diameters. Of course, 
there are so-called perfect nights when 
the conditions allow far greater power. 
But such nights exist, at the most, only 
two or three times a year, and are com- 
pletely unpredictable. No adequate rea- 
son why the atmospheric haze should 
suddenly clear for a few minutes has 
ever been given. Besides, when a per- 
fect night does come, the telescope is 
likely to be in use on some specialized 
piece of work which does not require 
great magnification. 

It must be borne in mind that high 
eyepiece magnification is used only on 
objects in the solar system, comets, and 
some of the nebulae. Most of the celes- 
tial objects far out in space show only 
as points of light, and magnification, no 
matter how great, is a disadvantage, as 
it cuts down the field. Magnifying eye- 
pieces are used only where surface de- 
tail of the object is of advantage. 

The conditions at Mt. Palomar are 
better suited to observation than those 
at Mt. Wilson. The atmosphere above 
this point is generally clear, and free 
from sudden storms. This last point 
is of great importance, as much of the 
atmospheric interference is due to air 
currents rather than to dust. Moving 
masses of air of different density and 
temperature cause hopeless image dis- 
tortion. 

Besides the more suitable weather 
conditions, Mt. Palomar has a second 
important advantage. Its location in a 
desert area insures freedom from Earth 
illumination due to advancing civiliza- 
tion. At Mt. Wilson this has become 
a serious problem. The mushroom 
growth of the near-by cities of Los An- 
geles, Long Beach, Pasadena, etc., to- 
gether with the ever increasing use of 
electric illumination, makes high power 
observations often next to impossible. 



THE GREAT EYE 



57 



Giving conditions at Mt. Palomar 
every possible advantage, it is still un- 
likely that observers will be able to go 
above 2500 diameters — except perhaps 
on freak perfect nights. 

ON THE FACE of it, this data 
would seem to indicate that the build- 
ing of the 200-inch telescope was a 
waste of perfectly good Pyrex glass. 
However, such an assertion leaves out 
the second important item in telescopic 
observation — brilliancy. 

As the 200-inch reflector collects four 
times as much light as the 100-inch mir- 



ror, the brilliancy of the image will be 
quadrupled. The range into space of 
the new mirror will be proportionately 
increased, though the size of the image 
may not be increased. Adding to this 
the increase in brilliance due to the 
superior method of silvering used on the 
200-inch mirror, we discover a great 
advance in the brilliancy half of the 
question. 

Increase in brilliancy has four distinct 
advantages : 

1. It allows the probing of greater 
depths of space. (As stars and more 
distant nebulae do not show a disk and 




than does the atmosphere through which we must observe. To the astrono- 
mer, our atmosphere is as great a hindrance as a pane of cheap window- 
glass is to an ordinary terrestrial telescope. The difficulty is that air 
moves; it waves, wiggles and crawls, and every motion of the air changes 
its refraction and moves the image about oh the photographic plate. If 
some cone of rays — some as-yet-unknown force — can be discovered which 
will immobilize that air, it will mean more to astronomers than would a 

2000" telescope. 



58 



ASTOUNDING SCIENCE-FICTION 



surface details as do the planets, great 
magnification is not necessary.) 

2. It allows photographs to be made 
in shorter time. This permits more va- 
ried observations in a given period of 
time, as the telescope is not tied up so 
long on a single exposure. 

3. It permits better observation of 
the surface details of the planets, which, 
although they may be no larger, will 
have greater brilliancy. 

4. It will give better photographs by 
infra-red light. (The significance of 
this point will be discussed later.) 

All the above points are dependent 
upon the aid of photography. In fact, 
astronomy is more and more becoming 
a sort of super-camera club. Whereas 
visual observations are always open to 
argument, a photographic plate gives 
continually-existent evidence. The use 
of time exposures, sometimes extending 
over several nights, enables the sensi- 
tive emulsion to pick up traces of light 
far too faint for the human eye. A pho- 
tographic plate is cumulative, adding up 
weak impressions, where the eye cannot. 

A grainless photographic plate would 
do as much for astronomy as the 200- 
inch telescope. Such a plate would 
allow a degree of enlargement far be- 
yond an)rthing possible at the present 
time. But so long as all available types 
of plates form grain — i. e., the clump- 
ing of the individual crystals, of silver 
— the degree of enlargement is strictly 
limited. Beyond a certain point, the en- 
larged image becomes only a mass of 
meaningless silver grains, all of the origi- 
nal detail being lost. 

It is possible, of course, that the pres- 
sent craze for miniature cameras may 
stimulate the development of such a 
grainless film. That research set in mo- 
tion by the host of wild-eyed shutter- 
clickers may some day solve the mys- 
tery of the planets is an off-chance, more 
amusing than likely. 

The fact remains, however, that mod- 
ern photography has provided the only 



feasible way to escape partially the bug- 
bear of atmospheric interference — that is, 
through the use of infra-red light. 

Anyone who has ever photographed 
by infra-red light knows that these long 
waves will penetrate haze. This same 
principle has been applied to astronomi- 
cal photography to counteract not only 
Earth haze, but also that which sur- 
rounds many of the planets. Although 
infra-red photographs give a somewhat 
distorted picture of the subject, they are 
at present the most successful means of 
escaping the atmosphere which must en- 
circle any world habited by life as we 
know it. 

Out of this maze of buts and ifs, 
what definite hope of answers to the 
thousand questions in the sky can the 
200-inch telescope hold? 

WE KNOW certainly that it will 
probe deeper into space. It is even pos- 
sible that this will result in finding a 
definite end to our universe, a distance 
beyond which there is nothing but star- 
less, empty space. Such a discovery 
would indicate that our universe was, 
after all, finite — and yet there is always 
the disturbing thought that an even 
larger mirror would again open new 
vistas. 

New light will undoubtedly be thrown 
on the moot question of the “exploding 
universe’’ and the shift to the red in the 
spectrum of the farthest nebulae. Stated 
simply, this theory maintains that the 
spectral analysis of nebulae deepest in 
space shows that they are traveling 
away from the center of the universe at 
ever increasing speed. 

This theory is, to a certain degree, 
contradicted by Einstein's contention 
that space, or rather “space-time,” is 
curved, and hence limited. But in any 
case, the light most needed on this mat- 
ter will come from better human compre- 
hension of the abstract, rather than 
from a telescopic mirror — no matter how 
big. Searching the borders of space al- 



THE GREAT EYE 



59 



ways turns out to be searching the bor- 
ders of the mind, and astronomy of the 
depths of ultimate space inevitably ends 
up as theoretical mathematics. But the 
new reflector will at least hold the mathe- 
maticians somewhere near reality by giv- 
mg them a check for some of their con- 
clusions. 

In any case, the probing of a lifeless 
universe becomes a rather futile chasing 
of tails. The most intriguing reason for 
peering into telescopes must be the eter- 
nal hope that sometime, somewhere, 
man will find evidence that his world is 
not the only spot where life and con- 
sciousness exist. 

As no telescope conceivable today will 
ever settle the question of possible life 
outside the limits of the solar system, - 
the matter comes down to a question of 
what the 200-inch Palomar telescope 
will show of the surfaces ef those plan- 
ets which travel with us through the un- 
known, eternally circling that dwarf 
star, our Sun. 

Eliminating the planets on which con- 
ditions of temperature, etc., make life 
impossible except in some form prob- 
ably unrecognizable to human eyes, there 
remain three astronomical bodies where 
it may still be hoped to discover traces 
of present, or past, life. 

First of these is our sister world, the 
Moon. Although it has been generally 
accepted that the Moon is a lifeless, air- 
less world, there are still faint echoes of 
doubt — and new advances in sciences 
usually begin from such faint voices. 

Several times during the last fifty 
years, independent observers have 
claimed to have seen variations in color 
and shape of small areas of the Moon’s 
surface. William H. Pickering, one of 
the best known American astronomers, 
stated in August, 1937, that "there are 
reasons for believing there is life on 
the Moon.” He based his conclusions 
on color changes occurring in regular 
monthly cycles. 

Admitting that the Moon has no ob- 



servable atmosphere at the present time, 
it is still possible that faint traces of 
oxygen or other unstable gases still lurk 
in the deep caverns, which probably un- 
derlie the surface. Such gases might at 
least support an adaptable form of plant 
life. 

In any case, there is good reason to 
believe that the Moon once had an at- 
mosphere. If so, life may have devel- 
oped, and left its mark. It is not in- 
conceivable that such life, faced by the 
death of its world, w'ould make a ter- 
rific final effort to escape its doom, an 
effort which might leave some indelible 
trace on the surface of the Moon. 

With the largest telescopes in use to- 
day we can see k marking on the Moon’s 
surface less than a mile in diameter. 
But with the 200-inch telescope, and the 
superior observing conditions at Mt. 
Palomar, buildings the size of the larger 
Egyptian pyramids should be visible. 

WE HAVE every reason to hope that 
the 200-inch reflector — if used for that 
purpose — will either reveal traces of life, 
past or present, on the Moon, or reduce 
the chances of finding such traces to a 
dismissible minimum. But no telescope, 
though it have a mirror a hundred miles 
in diameter, will ever reveal that cosmic 
hideout, the dark side of our satellite. 
If any remnants of life and civilization 
have escaped to the eternal darkness on 
the far- side of the Moon, no observer 
on Earth will ever see it. 

So let’s leave the final arguments for 
the case of life sometime on the Moon, 
until the great mirror is finally in place, 
and turn the lens of speculation on the 
planet named for the goddess of love — 
Venus. 

Here, however, we can have little 
hope. The surface of Venus is forever 
hidden by impenetrable clouds which 
make her so bright an object in the eve- 
ning sky. No matter how close you 
bring a cloud bank, and no matter how 
brilliant you make it, it is still a cloud 



60 



ASTOUNDING SCIENCE-FICTION 



bank. The only possible method of see- 
ing the surface of this world is through 
the perfection of infra-red photogra- 
phy. The new telescope will play its 
part in such work, but without the aid 
of the infra-red rays it is powerless — 
and it would take plates far more sensi- 
tive than any we have today to pierce 
the eternal Venusian clouds. 

So, inevitably, we come to that crim- 
son question mark, the Red Planet. 
After the tumult and shouting have died, 
and the astronomers have taken their 
mirrors and their arguments and de- 
parted. Mars remains the most impor- 
tant thing in the sky. If life has marked 
the face of another planet besides Earth, 
Mars remains the most likely place for 
a telescope to discover it. This planet 
is not surrounded by the never ending 
clouds which protect the secrets of 
Venus. 

Certainty Schiaparelli saw something 
resembling a tracework of fine lines on 
the surface of Mars in 1877. These ob- 
servations were corroborated by A. E. 
Douglas and Dr. Percival Lowell. Con- 
clusive proof of the existence of the 
canals has been piling up during recent 
years, culminating in the findings of 
Dr. E. C. Slipper, who photographed 
the Red Planet during the early months 
of 1937. 

However, the multiplicity of the ob- 
servations have given only a confusing 
multiplicity of findings as to the finer 
parts of the markings. That many 
astronomers have fled in timid fear from 
such a hot debate does not mean that 
we need less debate, but braver astrono- 
mers. 

Here, at least, we can feel confident 
that the 200-inch telescope will make 
astronomical history. Although Earthly 
atmospheric conditions will be no better 
for observation of Mars than any other 
heavenly body, it is reasonable that there 
will be some increase in possible -mag- 
nification. Perhaps the number of di- 
ameters now possible at Mt. Wilson will 



be doubled. But in any case, the image 
will be intensified, and advanced photo- 
graphic equipment will produce pictures 
which will settle at least the general 
system of the mysterious canal network, 
or their non-existence. 

That is the least we can expect. Infra- 
red work will probably clarify the ques- 
tion of the existence of a reasonably 
dense atmosphere. More sensitive tem- 
perature readings will certainly give a 
better estimate of the temperature of 
the Martian landscape, and of the sea- 
sonal changes.* 

FINALLY, there is always the 
chance that some one will have the giant 
mirror trained on Mars on one of those 
strange perfect nights, and that such a 
night will occur at a time when the orbit 
of Mars brings it closest to Earth. Then 
let the astronomers turn on the power, 
not the full theoretical power, of course, 
but enough to get just one detailed pho- 
tograph of the surface of the Red Planet. 
That one picture would be worth the 
several-million-dollar cost of the 200- 
inch reflector. 

But is the 200-inch mirror the ulti- 
mate in telescopes? Is there an abso- 
lute limit to the depths which man can 
peer into the sky? Yes — and no. At 
the time plans were made for the Mt. 
Palomar mirror, scientists considered 
building a 300-inch one instead. They 
finally decided on the 200-inch size, be- 
cause of the technical questions of trans- 
portation of the disk. But had there 

* Infra-red photography haa another use, that 
of “level-sampling”. Since infra-red light haa 
greater penetrative powers where haze, dust, 
and clouds intrude, and the penetrative powers 
progressively decrease with decreasing wave 
length — i.e., increasing blueness of the light- 
samplings of the various layers of another 
planet’s atmosphere can be made. Thus, if a 
series of photographs is made, the first in the 
extreme infra-red. the next in near infra-red, 
then red, orange, green, blue, violet, and finally 
ultraviolet, the first might show the surface of 
the planet, the second give traces of atmosphere, 
and progressively more atmosphere effect, till 
the final picture was representative not of the 
planet’s surface, but of the surface of the atmos- 
phere. Recently, a dust storm on the surface 
of Mars was revealed by this level-sampling 
method. IGd. 



THE GREAT EYE 



61 



been much to gain, that extra 100 inches 
would have been added. 

The truth is that, although the size 
of telescope mirrors is limited only by 
an ever increasing technical problem, 
there is a very definite limit imposed by 
atmospheric interference. If only man 
could escape that eternal haze that for- 
ever prevents his answering the riddles 
of space! But why speculate? This is 
not a fairy tale. And yet 

There is one man who is willing to 
speculate. He is Dr. John Anderson, 
head of the Astro-Physics Department 
of the California Institute of Technol- 
ogy. At present he is one of the guid- 
ing brains in the building of the 200- 
inch mirror. 

“There is one conceivable way of 
escaping the atmospheric haze,” he says. 
“That is to immobilize the air above the 
telescope. At Mt. Palomar we are high 
enough to escape most of the interfer- 
ence due to dust and water vapor. On 
good nights our principal problem is 
with shifting air currents of different 
densities. This interference may ex- 
tend as high as the top edge of the strato- 
sphere, two hundred miles up. 

“I recently conducted an experiment 
in stopping atmospheric agitation above 
a given point on the Earth’s surface. I 
sent up a cone of radiation. If this ra- 
diation had stopped the atmospheric 
movement, it would have been simple 



to have directed a telescope inside the 
cone. 

“Unfortunately, the experiment was 
not a success. Sometime I may try 
again. Other men will try. Eventually, 
some one may find a technique that will 
work. Perhaps some suggestion will 
come from another field of science. 

“The 200-inch telescope will undoubt- 
edly greatly increase our knowledge of 
the skies — how much we won’t know 
until it is actually in use. But the great- 
est problem — at least so far as the plan- 
ets are concerned — still remains, that of 
atmospheric interference. 

“My cone of rays didn’t work. But 
when science is ready for a new discov- 
ery, that discovery usually comes — 
often from the most unlikely place. 
Science teaches one not to say what 
cannot be done. Those of us alive to- 
day may yet escape all atmospheric in- 
terference and see clearly into the sky 
— and when that day comes, no man 
may say what we may find.” 

Those paragraphs are only specula- 
tion today. But they are the specula- 
tions of a man who has spent his life 
seeking to answer the thousand ques- 
tions of the universe beyond our little 
planet. Of course, if you prefer, you 
can say that such dreams have little to 
do with science. They are like the rest 
of those idle speculations — without 
which we would still be hiding in caves 
and killing animals with wooden spears. 




c<>a^ctA wuCoce . . . 

MANUFACTURED AT SMALLEST PROFIT / 



CNMAAr « rffMAt AJtJL 



MO IV 3 J 



62 




PHILOSOPHERS 



W ELL, I’m blowed !” 

Dismay burst from the heat- 
parched lips of Voorland as 
he scrambled to his feet from where he 
had been lying, half-stunned, on the sur- 



face of a stranger world than he had 
thought could ever exist. 

Voorland was hatless, coatless. Per- 
spiration dampened his bedraggled shirt 
and caused it to adhere uncomfortably 



63 




Behind, the mag- 
nets, motors and 
cables trailed, each 
borne along on pro- 
portionately stout 
legs of protoplasm 
growing up from 
the ground. 



D. L. JAMES 



Tells of a living planet ruled by — 



OF STONE 



to his stalwart shoulders. He looked 
very much as if he had but recently 
stepped from his laboratory. He had. 

For a moment be stared at the tum- 
bled wreckage of his pet invention — a 



machine that, by dissolving the ether, 
had made his journey hither as simple 
as stepping through a doorway. Nbw 
at a critical time, just as he was at- 
tempting to leave this nightmare world, 



64 



ASTOUNDING SCIENCE-FICTION 



it had failed him. The door in space 
had closed, leaving him on the wrong 
side. 

“Ye gods!” he muttered. “Mac was 
right. I shouldn’t have taken such a 
chance. But, even at that, I’m lucky — 
lucky one of those babes didn’t fall on 
me !” 

Those six huge magnets — each of 
them weighing a ton — together with 
other parts of his unique machine, lay 
scattered around him. He was stranded, 
without provisions of either food or 
water. But being a physicist of ex- 
ceptional devotion, this calamity failed 
to shock him as might reasonably be ex- 
pected. 

Breathing deeply, he wiped the per- 
spiration from his brow. That swollen, 
blue-white sun still blazed down scorch- 
ingly from its setting in the greenish 
bowl of the sky. His gaze leveled out 
over that illimitable sweep of surround- 
ing hillocks. Bare and silent as he had 
first observed them, but appearing even 
more desolate. 

Three furtive' strides brought him to 
the big motor. The disc and quartz- 
cored coils of thin glass tubing were still 
attached. Despite its weight and the 
distance it had fallen, it was but slightly 
sunk in the ground — that strange ground 
which was unlike sand or loam or rock, 
but was rather a gelatinous, leathery 
stuff of pallid hue, like the body of a 
snail. 

Voorland examined the motor, run- 
ning his hand over the raw metal of the 
severed base. “I’m glad Mac didn’t get 
caught,” he muttered. “It’s easy to fig- 
ure out what happened. The force- 
screen shifted, then the power snapped 
off. I wonder what became of that con- 
founded stone I was trying to take back 
as a specimen?” 

He peered around. Almost at once he 
discovered it — a fragment of one of those 
walking stones. 

The thing lay on the ground just out- 
side the conglomeration of fallen ap- 



paratus. Or, rather, it was not lying on 
the ground, but perched up on its 
pseudo-legs, a few inches above the sur- 
face, as if meditating flight. 

A chill ran down Voorland’s spine. 
Those legs, he knew, were not attached 
to the stone, but were merely pseudo- 
podial projections sprouting upward 
against it from the ground underneath. 

This orb — this world on which he was 
stranded — was, he had reason to believe, 
far outside the Solar System and prob- 
ably exterior even to the Galactic Sys- 
tem itself. Possibly it was located in 
some inconceivably remote island uni- 
verse, where the very texture of space 
and the prevailing natural laws were of 
an unknown order. 

Indeed, aside from this vague as- 
sumption, Voorland knew almost noth- 
ing of his surroundings, nor by what 
strange reversal of nature the very 
ground on which he stood should appear 
to be alive. 

BUT NOW, as his attention became 
fixed on this stone — a highly crystalline 
lump of what was apparently nothing but 
translucent green beryl — poised there on 
its pseudo-legs near him, a voice from 
beyond the brink of audibility seemed to 
swell into his consciousness. 

“You chump! Now you’re in a fine 
fix!” 

Not, of course, in exactly those words. 
That was how Voorland interpreted the 
idea. 

Startled, he gazed at the stone. 
“Telepathy,” he muttered. “Well, I’d 
already guessed that’s how they manage 
those legs. Mental control. The 
ground’s alive — but the rock crystals do 
the thinking.” 

“Sure, why not?” With growing 
clearness came that psychic voice, as if 
in answer to his thoughts. “1 perceive 
you are an organism of very low order, 
formed of matter in the second cycle — 
matter that can maintain but a transient, 
synthetic consciousness. That accounts 



PHILOSOPHERS OF STONE 



65 



for your rash attempt to kidnap me. 
Now it’s up to me to present you to the 
Sigarians, to be studied. I’m afraid 
you’ll find it rather unpleasant. But 
don’t blame me. You brought it on 
yourself.” 

Voorland mopped his flushed face 
with the soggy sleeve of his shirt. His 
thoughts were now pretty well mixed up. 
A thinking stone! But he was trying 
to keep a firm grip on himself, and pres- 
ently, with a degree of composure, he 
managed a question, speaking aloud, al- 
though he realized this was probably 
superfluous. 

“The Sigarians? Who are they?” 

“Organisms somewhat like yourself. 
Newcomers here only a few years back, 
occupying no stable position either in 
space or time, but they get a big kick out 
of. studying living forms. Although if 
it were left to me I'd wash my hands of 
you entirely. I lost all interest in such 
things aeons ago. Now, like my fel- 
lows, I much prefer to lie up here in 
unbroken contemplation, absorbing cos- 
mic energy. But time passes. Come, 
let’s be off.” 

Green light flashed from the polished 
facets of the stone, which was as large 
as Voorland’s two fists. Now it took a 
few tentative steps, circling the tumbled 
wreckage. Its manner of locomotion 
was at once unique and horrible. Fresh 
sprouts, like the arms of an amoeba, 
appeared with machinelike regularity 
from the ground underneath, pressed up- 
ward against its lower surface and bore 
it along, to ultimately flow in on them- 
selves, shrink and disappear as soon as 
they had served their purpose. 

And as it moved, the stone left no 
trail on that leperous white ground. It 
smoothed off immediately into its cus- 
tomary leathery surface. 

Voorland, however, had no intention 
of leaving the wreckage of his apparatus, 
for he felt that in those huge magnets, 
motor and disc, lay his only chance — 
definitely slight — of ever departing from 

AST— 5 



this ghastly world into which he was 
exiled. 

“Ah, I see you don’t wish to leave 
this stuff behind,” said the voice in his 
consciousness. “Very well then.” 
Pseudopodial legs immediately ap- 
peared under each of the huge magnets, 
under the motor and under each sep- 
arate piece of apparatus. With one ac- 
cord, they all reared up, stood poised, 
waiting, ready to march away. 

THE EFFECT was decidedly un- 
pleasant. Voorland felt the short hair 
rise on the back of his neck. 

“Look here,” he hesitated, speaking 
aloud, his voice sounding weak and flat 
in that thin, hot air. “Where are these 
— Sigarians? Where are we going?” 
Immediately a picture formed in his 
mind. A dark, cavernous inclosure 
where pin-points of light moved and 
flickered. He caught a vague impression 
of huge girders and beams upholding a 
Gargantuan metal dome. And without 
knowing how or why he knew, he sensed 
that this place was somewhere under his 
feet, somewhere down toward the core 
of this protoplasmic-sheathed orb. 

Then the image faded. Voorland saw 
that his guide, or captor — the crystalline 
lump of thinking green beryl — was wait- 
ing. And somehow its rigid, unchang- 
ing form manifested rising impatience. 

“Really, we must be off,” it said. 
“Come along now.” 

Still Voorland hesitated. His throat 
felt parched and dry. “Hold on a mo- 
ment,” he muttered under his breath. 
“Show me one of these Sigarians — these 
organisms you say are tike me.” 

Swiftly, another image formed on the 
visual screen back of his eyes. He 
caught a vivid but momentary impression 
of a pallid white form, of a head with 
glassy, staring eyes, and of a compli- 
cated arrangement of jointed claws and 
legs. 

Voorland gasped as the image swiftly 



66 



ASTOUNDING SCIENCE-FICTION 



erased itself. "Hell ! If that’s a Sigarian, 
count ine out !’’ 

“Oh, well, then,” sighed that inward 
voice. “I don’t like to appear rude and 
insistent, even in my dealings with an 
evanescent organism such as you. But 
if you prefer it that way ” 

Suddenly, Voorland was moving en- 
tirely against his will down the slope of 
the hillock at an even and quite rapid 
rate. He didn’t need to glance down- 
ward at his feet to know the cause; but 
when he did look, he barely restrained a 
cry of revulsion. 

Pseudopodial sprouts from that living 
horror underfoot were upholding him, 
bearing him onward. The sensation was 
like standing on a moving escalator 
floored with rubbery, writhing bristles. 

Almost immediately Voorland lost his 
balance, fell. But his advance continued 
uninterruptedly. Fresh pseudopodia ap- 
peared with surprising suddenness, 
caught his body as he toppled sidewise, 
carried him along with an inexorable, 
bu.sinesslike efficiency. 

Voorland wriggled to his knees and 
stared spellbound at that weird, moving 
caravan of which he was a part. Be- 
hind him, in single file, marched the six 
huge magnets, each upheld by a set of 
thick, straining legs. The even heavier 
motor, w’ith its attached disc, staggered 
along in the rear. Broken wires and 
cables dangled, but did not drag over 
that pallid surface. Each was now pro- 
vided with a series of tiny legs through- 
out its length, wherever it touched the 
ground, appearing as so many crawling, 
thousand-legged worms. 

And heading that awesome line of 
pedestrians was the thinking stone, 
marching along on its own set of pseudo- 
legs in a nonchalant, sangfroid manner, 
quite as if it were not directing the whole 
affair, and seemingly inattentive to the 
incredible retinue trailing along behind. 

“The devil!” Vooiiand struggled to 
extricate himself from his not-too-dig- 



nified position. “This is a heck of a 
way to travel. Let me up; I'll walk.” 

SEVERAL TIMES he managed to 
regain his footing, only to tumble head- 
long the next instant. 

“You may as well cease those foolish 
exertions,” declared the telepathic voice 
of his captor. “Why don’t you try to 
collect what small reasoning power you 
have, and admit that you are utterly 
powerless to avert or alter the fate in 
store for you — just as all puny, tem- 
porary organisms, such as you, must 
inevitably do in the end? There, that’s 
better. I see you are following my ad- 
vice.” 

Voorland had indeed relaxed, not in 
complete hopelessness, but because he 
sensed that further struggle at the pres- 
ent moment would be unavailing. 

He now saw that their line of march 
had carried them completely down the 
slope of the hillock and halfway up the 
next. They seemed to be moving in the 
direction of that dark, shadow-filled 
ravine into which those other thinking 
stones had scurried when they first be- 
came aware of his presence there among 
them. But now he could discover noth- 
ing of that black gash. Presumably, it 
had closed up like a huge mouth. 

“I see you have your thoughts some- 
what in order,” remarked the beryl crys- 
tal, as clearly as though it were not strid- 
ing along ten yards in advance of V oor- 
land. “But you are still battling with 
w'ild plans of escape. I don’t mind let- 
ting you know that, if it were possible, 
I might aid you to do so. Despite your 
attempt to kidnap me, I hold no hard 
feelings. You are wondering if you can- 
not make friends with the Sigarians, and 
get their help in reassembling your ap- 
paratus, so that you may return to a 
place you call ‘Earth’ — a small, unim- 
portant planet in a different space-time 
continuum. Very doubtful, I must say. 

“You are also playing with the idea 
that possibly ‘Mac’ may come to your 



PHILOSOPHERS OF STONE 



67 



rescue. ‘Mac,’ I perceive, is that other 
similar organism, a close friend of yours 
in whom you have confided. However, 
you doubt ‘Mac’s’ ability even to under- 
stand the notes you have left behind, and 
you realize that before he can possibly 
duplicate your apparatus, you will, in all 
likelihood, have ceased to exist as a con- 
scious entity.” 

A feeling of awe rose in Voorland at 
this accurate recital of his thoughts. 

‘‘You seem to know everything,” he 
admitted. “Tell me, then, what in the 
devil is this stuff underneath us ?” 

The stone paused. Voorland’s con- 
tinued motion lessened the distance be- 
tween them to a bare three yards, then 
it, too, ceased. 

“This ‘stuff,’ as you call it, is the per- 
fect living substance. It is, in a physical 
sense, practically immortal. It subsists 
entirely on raw, inorganic matter — and 
is only vaguely conscious.” 

“And you call that perfection?” Voor- 
land was thankful that their march was 
delayed. One by one, the huge mag- 
nets drew near, paused. 

“Ah, my friend,” came that mental 
voice, “I see you have trouble in differ- 
entiating life and consciousness. They 
are as far apart as the poles, I assure 
you. The principle of consciousness, 
mind, intelligence — call it what you will 
— rests in the atom itself.” 

“Heisenberg’s Uncertainty. Principle, 
eh?” muttered Voorland. “Something 
about that you can’t predict the behavior 
of an electron.” 

“Exactly !” The stone suddenly 
hunched itself up proudly on its bor- 
rowed walking equipment. “And in 
me, my friend, you see a very fair speci- 
men of the end and aim of life itself — 
the perfect thinking substance. Life is 
just a sorting-out process. Matter that 
has been worked and reworked for a 
few billion years by living organisms is 
quite capable of crystallizing into a con- 
scious, intelligent entity — as a single 
glance at me will prove to you. Now 



we’ve wasted enough time. We shall 
descend to the buried dwelling of the 
Sigarians.” 

“Descend?” Voorland threw uneasy 
glances here and there. 

VOUCHING no reply, the stone 
started moving. Voorland found him- 
self following after it — still involuntarily 
— and in another moment that weird 
procession was again under way. 

Looking forward, Voorland saw the 
ground opening immediately ahead of 
the walking stone. In another instant 
they were in a shallow groove, which 
deepened swiftly as he watched. Fol- 
lowing along in single file behind 
marched that incredible consort of 
equipage. 

Rapidly the groove became a narrow 
valley, then a deep canyon, whose ver- 
tical walls were composed of that leath- 
ery, protoplasmic matter which seemed 
to smother this dread world in its heavy, 
living folds. But now, at this depth, it 
had lost something of its leathery ap- 
pearance, becoming more gelatinous — 
slimy. 

It grew dark. The thin strip of green- 
ish sky overhead narrowed, blotted out. 
The air became stifling, noisome with a 
scent of living matter. 

The passage slanted steeply down- 
ward. On the heels of the withdrawing 
light, a rising dread of what was before 
him beat persistently at Voorland. That 
buried metal dome — what manner of be- 
ings were those pallid white things that 
they could dwell here under such con- 
ditions? But he struggled to throw off 
this oppressive sense of helplessness. 

Presently, his eyes adjusting them- 
selves to the enshrouding dimness, he 
saw that a vague luminescence was emit- 
ted by the living walls of the tubelike 
channel through which they passed. 
There came the disturbing realization 
that those walls were oozing together 
immediately behind his odd convoy. 

No further mental impressions came 



68 



ASTOUNDING SCIENCE-FICTION 



from the thinking stone, which must 
have been thoroughly occupied in di- 
recting each movement of that extraor- 
dinary retinue and in keeping the 
passageway open. 

But Voorland saw that this incredi- 
ble body through which they were mov- 
ing was not homogenous, but was 
honeycombed and grottoed with in- 
numerable air passages and pockets, like 
a monstrous sponge. 

Now, by that emitted phosphorescent 
light, Voorland saw that they were en- 
tering a bubblelike space of huge dimen- 
sions. Around him were collected a 
multitude of thinking entities like his 
captor, except that they seemed to re- 
semble many different minerals. 

Huge, faceted masses of crystal moved 
sluggishly aside. Here and there 
among them drooped thick, writhing 
tentacles of the protoplasmic matter 
they seemed to control. 

Voorland’s advance ceased. Now, for 
a time, something like a conference took 
place around him. And in a telepathic 
manner he could sense rising excitement, 
but no single, clean-cut impression came 
to him. 

At length, however, the green beryl 
crystal separated . itself from the others 
and drew near Voorland. 

“MY FRIEND,” came its mental 
voice, “we are very near the domed 
dwelling of the Sigarians. I have con- 
ferred with my fellows. We know that 
your desire is to return to your proper 
sphere, and to do this you must first 
have opportunity to reconstruct the ap- 
paratus that made your entry here pos- 
sible. You will require many things — • 
things that are obtainable only among a 
race of beings whose science is some- 
what on a level with your own. 

“In the buried dwelling of the Sigari- 
ans, anchored to the rocky core of this 
planet, is, we believe, all that you would 
require. But the Sigarians are diffi- 
cult creatures to deal with. When first 



they migrated here from out of space, 
we suffered greatly at their hands — 
many of our numbers were completely 
disintegrated in their furnaces and acid 
vats. 

“They are extremely difficult to con- 
verse with, and it was only after a con- 
siderable lapse of time that we estab- 
lished amiable relations with them. This 
agreement calls for the delivery into 
their hands of all meteorites and life 
forms that land here from space. In re- 
turn for this service our own members 
are to be held inviolate. 

“We regret that this demands your 
surrender to the Sigarians. Conse- 
quently, we have worked out a plan 
which may save you and at the same time 
give you opportunity to reconstruct your 
apparatus. 

“I shall now conduct you to the Si- 
garians, and, from time to time, direct 
you toward the proper conduct. You 
will need to follow these directions ex- 
actly and without question. Do you 
agree ?” 

“O. K.,” said Voorland. “I haven't 
much choice.” 

Again he felt himself moving down an- 
other steeply slanted channel. 

Suddenly, a spot of pale, bottle-green 
light appeared ahead. Rapidly it en- 
larged, and Voorland, half-blinded, re- 
alized that here the channel again en- 
tered an open grotto in this protoplasmic 
ocean — a grotto filled with green light. 

Solid rock abruptly pressed upward 
against his body, and, with a happy 
sense of freedom, he scrambled to his 
feet, stood upright on that smooth sur- 
face. 

Ahead of him a bulging facade of cor- 
roded metal rose vertically. The green- 
ish radiance that filled the grotto seemed 
to have its source in a round, brilliant 
disc high up on this metal wall. 

Clearly came the psychic voice of his 
crystalline guide. 

“Before you is the entrance to the 



PHILOSOPHERS OF STONE 69 




The lever moved under his hand — and the pressing world of protoplasm 
heaved, writhed, and flooded inward! 



dwelling of the Sigarians. Just under- 
neath the green disc is a door. Proceed 
to this door, whereupon I will further 
instruct you.” 



Voorland walked over that flat surface 
of rock. As he neared the disc, the 
greenish brilliance intensified around 
him, and he became aware of a strange 



ASTOUNDING SCIENCE-FICTION 



7Q 

pridkling sensation throughout his body, 
as of high-voltage electricity. But he 
had no difficulty in locating the door, a 
large, elliptical affair of ribbed metal. 

"You are to open the door,” came a 
second mental order. "Just within, on 
your right, you will discover a lever. 
Pull this lever down. It operates a sig- 
nal which will summon the Sigarians. 
When they appear I will intercede with 
them in your behalf, and give you 
further instructions.” 

VOORLAND’S hands grasped the 
rim of the door. But before he at- 
tempted to open it, he glanced back. 
Brilliantly lighted by that greenish glare 
was the concave surface of the grotto, 
like a huge bubble clinging to the angle 
formed by the rock floor and this metal 
structure. Through his mind flashed a 
momentary dread, not of that honey- 
combed horror of strange life from which 
he had just emerged, but of those pallid 
white creatures, the Sigarians, into 
whose hands he was about to thrust him- 
self. 

"Hope my little green friend isn’t kid- 
ding me,” he thought. “I imagine it’ll 
take some high-pressure backing to get 
me in solid with these babes. Well, here 
goes ” 

He pulled on the door. It opened 
ponderously. 

‘‘Queer !” he muttered. "They leave 
their door unlocked and the porch light 
on — maybe they’re expecting me.” 

Before him stretched a corridor, 
metal-walled, and lighted with a pale, 
opalescent glow. But nothing moved in 
that corridor — it was completely de- 
serted, utterly silent. 

Voorland stepped inside. Near the 
entrance he found the lever — a metal 
arm working in a vertical slot. A queer 
doorbell, he thought, but nothing 
prompted him to disobey the instruc- 
tions he had received. He grasped the 
lever, pulled it down. 



Immediately, a vague rushing sound 
from outside the open doorway made 
him whirl, his hand still on the lever. 

In the split-second that followed, 
Voorland’s reactions were merely in- 
stinctive. His glance swept through the 
door. The green light was gone. Only 
darkness lay outside there — darkness 
and that rushing sound. But a pro- 
nounced sense of menace, and the vague 
notion that lie was being tricked, 
stiffened him, contracted the muscles in 
his arm. 

He shot the lever back in place. The 
green light snapped on. That rushing 
sound ended in what was almost a snarl 
— a hiss of frustration and rage. Before 
Voorland’s eyes boiled a writhing wall 
of protoplasin, now less than six feet 
from the doorway. But it was pressing 
back in anguish — retreating under the 
stinging effulgence of that green light. 

And in a flash Voorland realized that 
the thinking crystals had been using him 
merely as a cat’s paw. The greenish 
light was more than light ; it was a 
guard placed there over the entrance to 
keep back the protoplasmic ocean from 
those who dwelt within this sunken dome 
of metal. 

Abruptly that silent corridor behind 
Voorland burst into life and sound. 
Forms surged along it toward him 

Something intangible struck him, 
seemed to burst inside his skull and 
numb his brain. There came a great 
darkness 

WHEN VOORLAND again became 
aware of continued existence, his first 
impression was that of subdued voices 
around him, and of a languorous weak- 
ness throughout his body. 

At first it was too much of an effort 
even to think. But after a time he 
sensed that he was lying on a smooth, 
level surface which felt like polished 
metal, and that over him was suspended 
a limpid globe of soft light that seemed 
to lave him in its cool, healing rays. 



PHILOSOPHERS OF STONE 



71 



Someone was bending over him, 
speaking in a foreign tongue. But, 
strangely, Voorland’s mind automatically 
interrupted those words. 

“I am Lator,” said the voice. “You 
have been near death from the neural- 
ray, but you are now out of danger and 
among friends.” 

Memory suddenly returned to Voor- 
land. He propped himself up on one 
elbow, stared around. At first he was 
conscious only of that circle of faces 
staring back at him — clean-cut, alertly 
intelligent faces. Human faces ! 

Astounded, he realized that these were 
men grouped around him — men dressed 
in queer, outlandish togas of green, 
iridescent triangles that overlapped to 
form a kind of metallic fabric ; and their 
features, although human, were disturb- 
ingly anomalous, alien. 

“Where am I ?” he gasped. “I thought 
Where are the Sigarians?” 

“You are aboard the space ship Nan- 
cildredth,” answered the thin-faced patri- 
arch who had given his name as Lator. 
“We are lying stranded underneath the 
living blanket that covers this terrible 
planet, Baramthi. And we whom you 
see around you are the Sigarians.” 

“You ? The Sigarians!” Voor- 

land struggled do sit up. Strength was 
rapidly returning to him. “But I thought 
that ” 

“While you were under the healing 
ray,” said Lator, “we took the liberty 
to probe your latent memory and to 
establish grounds for mutual under- 
standing. You must realize that you 
were purposely deceived, by the Quasi- 
peds, into believing we were hideous 
creatures. The Quasipeds — which is the 
name we have given to the intelligent 
crystals who rule this planet — wished 
to use you in their campaign against us. 
In this they were very nearly success- 
ful. Had you not reestablished the 
guard-ray immediately, we would have 
been swept by an inrush of protoplasm. 
\Ve deeply reget that in our sudden 



alarm we misunderstood, your purpose. 
But I still cannot understand why the 
port was left unlocked.” 

“Perhaps I can explain that,” said 
one of the others. “Ribel is absent.” 

There was a moment of silence. “You 
mean,” demanded Lator, “that Ribel 
has left the ship secretly? Without my 
knowledge ? I cannot understand it ! 
Search the ship. Two of you return to 
the port, so that he may reenter if he is 
indeed outside.” 

A moment later Voorland and Lator 
were left alone. 

Voorland sat up on the metal plate, 
looked curiously around. The room was 
octagonal dn shape, rather large, and 
the metal plate on which he had been 
lying probably represented a surgical 
table. Over it was raised the thick arm 
of an odd-appearing apparatus, of which 
the luminous globe was that most un- 
derstandable feature. 

“I shall endeavor to acquaint you 
with conditions here,” said Lator. “Over 
a decade ago we left our world, Sigaria, 
on a voyage of cosmic exploration — 
three hundred causists and students. The 
Nancildredth was equipped to travel not 
only across the normal geodesics of 
space, but also to cut across through hy- 
perspace from one space-time continuum 
to another. Thus we were enabled to 
traverse inconceivable distances with no 
lapse of time whatever. 

“Our voyage up to a certain point was 
wonderfully successful ; but when near 
this planet, Baramthi, our fuel element 
became altered, due to unshielded radia- 
tions, and was rendered useless. 

“TWO COURSES offered— either to 
consign ourselves to an eternal drift 
through space, or to try to land on 
Baramthi. We chose the latter, hoping 
to replenish our fuel. But we very 
nearly suffered annihilation by impact. 
The force of our landing was so great 
as to drive the Nancildredth beneath the 
surface of this protoplasmic ocean, 



72 



ASTOUNDING SCIENCE-FICTION 



whereupon we continued sinking down 
to bedrock. 

“We lie here now, anchored against 
the rocky core of Baramthi, helplessly 
stranded. We have exhausted every 
possibility of refueling our motors. This 
planet seems to be devoid of the element 
we require. Time — an eternity, it seems 
• — has passed, and now there are scarcely 
two score of us left.” 

Lator paused, his white beard droop- 
ing disconsolately. 

Just at this instant one of the search- 
ing party returned. 

“O Lator,” he spoke hurriedly, but 
respectfully, “we have discovered the 
reason for Ribel’s absence. As you are 
aware, he has long been working on a 
device intended to detect the possible 
presence of the red metal we need to 
refuel our motors. Now, however, this 
device is gone. We believe that Ribel, 
not wishing to arouse our hopes vainly, 
but having noticed some positive re- 
action, has taken his device with him and 
has gone outside the ship to continue his 
search.” 

“Let us hope,” said Lator, “that he 
will return safely.” 

“But how is it possible for anyone .to 
go outside?” asked Voorland. 

Lator smilecj grimly. “Very simple. 
We have collected several specimens of 
Quasipeds. It is only necessary to take 
one of these along, when going outside, 
threatening it with instant disintegra- 
tion should the way be blocked. As you 
know, their strange mental control of 
the protoplasmic body in which we are 
sunk allows them to open a channel 
through it at will. But being inanimate 
in a physical sense, they are markedly 
helpless when removed from it. I fear 
that our past research among their num- 
bers has aroused great hatred — although 
we were not intentionally cruel. Come, 
my son, if you are sufficiently recovered 
you will wish to view our ship — a prison 
that Fate has doomed you to share with 
us.” 



Somewhat dazedly, Voorland fol- 
lowed the aged Sigarian on a tour of in- 
spection. Within a short time he came 
to realize that this sunken structure was 
of truly colossal proportions. Besides 
dormitory facilities and control-room, 
it contained an astronomical observatory, 
library, and strangely outfitted labora- 
tory. 

The search for Ribel was still under- 
way, on the off-chance that he was some- 
where aboard. Lator asked many 
questions, although he seemed to be sur- 
prisingly well acquainted with Voor- 
land’s recent catastrophe. 

“For years,” he explained, “we have 
managed to synthesize food from proteid 
molecules of the surrounding protoplasm. 
We have sunk shafts into the rock un- 
derneath the ship for necessary chem- 
icals, and in the vain hope of discover- 
ing traces of the red metal which would 
mean our salvation. But this element, 
scarce even on Sigaria, our home planet, 
seems to be absolutely nonexistent here 
on Baramthi.” 

“Isn’t the ship hopelessly damaged, 
after lying here so long?” asked Voor- 
land. 

“Not at all,” declared Lator. “We im- 
mediately repaired all injuries sustained 
in landing, and throughout our exile we 
have kept the machinery in perfect con- 
dition. We hoped that somehow we 
might gain a supply of the necessary fuel, 
either by transmutation or from some 
local source. Come — I will show you 
the motor room.” 

HE LED the, way to a light metal 
stairway descending into a huge, pit- 
like chamber in the bowels of the ship. 
Voorland followed, his mind attempting 
to adjust itself to the strange turn his 
fortunes had taken. 

Lator paused at the foot of the stairs, 
gestured with a thin arm toward the 
huge mechanism towering above them. 

“There,” he said brokenly, “is our 
only hope of ever leaving Baramthi. 



PHILOSOPHERS OF STONE 



73 



But for a long time it has remained si- 
lent, lifeless, needing only a scrap of 
the red metal to reanimate it and enable 
us to blast free from this accursed orb !” 

\'oorland’s gaze swept the huge struc- 
ture — an atomic motor, he thought, but 
more than that — a machine capable of 
utilizing its released energy in some un- 
known fashion. 

“For a long time,” continued Lator, 
“we hoped that in the Quasipeds them- 
selves w'e might locate the essential ele- 
ment. As you have probably observed, 
collectively they resemble a varied as- 
sortment of crystalline minerals, such as 
commonly occur on many orbs through- 
out space. But on analysis these lumps 
of matter revealed an astoundingly com- 
plex molecular and atomic structure, 
quite at variance with natural crystalliza- 
tion. Each gave very startling and un- 
expected reactions. Why this should 
be, I do not know, except that Baram- 
thi is an exceedingly ancient planet, and 
matter here may have — evolved, so to 
speak.” 

“I believe that’s in accordance with 
what my crystalline friend, the green 
beryl, gave me to understand,” observed 
Voorland. 

I.ator nodded. “Possibly. But that 
doesn’t explain certain buried ruins we 
have found along the rocks. I think we 
must look deeper. I cannot read the 
cosmic riddle of what may have oc- 
curred here ; but I believe that what we 
s:e here is the aftermath of some an- 
cient tragedy — some miscarriage of hu- 
man experimentation.” 

“This element you need for fuel,” 
mused \'oorland, “this red metal — ex- 
actly what is it?” 

Lator smiled dejectedly. “A very 
rare metal,” he e.xplained. “Sigaria, 
our home planet, contains but a minute 
quantity. But we thought, at the com- 
mencement of our journeying, that our 
supply was ample, for vve carried with 
us over fifty pounds of the stuff. It is a 



soft, reddish, metallic element, atomic 
weight sixty-three point six ” 

Excited shouting from overhead in- 
terrupted Lator’s words. Looking up. 
Voorland saw a group of Sigarians de- 
scending the stairs wkh tumultuous 
haste. 

“Lator! Lator!” they were crying. 
“Ribel has returned ! He has found the 
red metal 1” 

Voorland saw the lank frame of his 
patriarchal host stiffen. 

“Come,” said Lator, his voice oddly 
hoarse. “Let us see what Ribel has 
discovered.” 

Voorland ascetided the stairs and hur- 
ried down- a corridor in the wake of 
these queer exiles. At the end of the 
corridor was another excited group col- 
lected around an open port — the same, 
Voorland realized, through which he 
himself had gained entrance to the ship. 

On Lator’s arrival they all crowded 
through the port. Voorland followed 
after them, out into that mephitic green 
radiance. 

“Ribel has found the red metal !” they 
were shouting. 

THERE ON that semicircle of rock 
whose outer boundary was the pallid, 
concave surface of protoplasm, stood 
Ribel. He was clad in an odd-appearing 
armor. In his hands he was holding 
what appeared to be a thick piece of in- 
sulated cable. 

“The red metal 1” exclaimed Ribel, 
pointing to the end of the cable where 
the insulation had been scraped off. 

“Copper!” muttered Voorland. 

And then he saw behind Ribel the six 
huge electromagnets, the motor and disc, 
which had opened for him the passage- 
way hither through space. All were 
l 3 'ing on the rock floor, well clear of the 
living wall beyond. And the cable that 
Ribel held was attached to one of these 
magnets. 

Then Voorland realized that the Si- 
garians were all looking at him. and that 



74 



ASTOUNDING SCIENCE-FICTION 



Lator was speaking, his wrinkled face 
working eagerly. 

“The red metal ! Ribel has indeed 
found the red metal — but these strange 
objects are not ours. They belong to 
our young friend here.” 

Silence greeted .his words — silence 
through which swept an occasional groan 
of disappointment. Evidently, in these 
strange people, the sense of ownership 
and justice was highly developed. 

"You’re sure it’s what you need to 
refuel the ship?” asked Voorland. 

Lator nodded. “It is the red metal.” 

“O. K.,” said Voorland. “I’m as 
anxious to get away from here as you 
are. Go ahead ; use it.” 

A pleased shout followed his words. 
Lator’s face crinkled into a smile. 

“My son,” he said, “you have won our 
eternal gratitude. And you shall not re- 
gret your action. Before ever we set 
foot on Sigaria, we shall return you to 
your own proper sphere — Earth, I be- 
lieve you name it. Thus we swear ! Is 
it not so?” he asked, turning to the 
others. 

A ready shout of agreement arose 
from them, and they immediately began 
dragging one of the huge magnets in 
through the port. 

“You are now one of us,” said Lator, 
placing his hand on Voorland’s arm. 
“But for a time we shall be very busy. 



Make yourself at home. None of us 
shall know sleep until after the Nan- 
cildredth has swung out through space 
from this accursed orb, this nightmare 
planet — Baramthi !” 

PERHAPS eight hours later, Voor- 
land was standing in the control room of 
the Nancildredth, With Lator and a 
young Sigarian pilot. 

All was in readiness for departure. 
Lator himself grasped the control 
lever that would send them into space. 
His thin, old face bore evidence of the 
strain he was under. Voorland watched 

the lever ease over 

Suddenly, the floor jolted, pressed up- 
ward against his feet. 

There came a sound, at first like wet 
snow sliding off a roof, then like the 
tearing of crisp silk. Sunlight abruptly 
smote Voorland’s eyes, filling the control 
room with a blue-white splendor. 

“Thank Heaven!” he gasped. “The 
old pill has blasted loose!” 

Lator smiled triumphantly. “As soon 
as our velocity is high enough, we'll slip 
into hyper-space. Then we’ll head for 
your planet. Already our automatic se- 
quence calculator has been set in the re- 
verse, and is tracing out your world-line. 
We haven’t forgotten our promi.se!” 

“I imagine Mac is fretting his silly 
head off,” said Voorland, smiling. “He’ll 
be surprised when I walk in on him.” 



In July 

Astounding Science-Fiction 

Voyage 13 by 

Ray Cummings 




Meet Your New 

Oktabiir 



SPONSOR 



DON'T MISS THIS THRILLING PROGRAM 



After twenty-six successful weeks on the air for “Blue Coal,” your favorite, 
THE SHADOW program, will be continued over a large number of stations by 
another sponsor, and give listeners the same thrilling type of entertainment that has 
made this one of the most outstanding shows on the air today. 

This new SHADOW series will be sponsored by Goodrich Silvertown Tire Dealers, 
who will use it to announce a new kind of tire. The New Goodrich Silvertown with 
Life-Saver Tread. 

In this change of sponsorship the list of SHADOW radio stations, as well as 
broadcasting time have been changed. Below is listed for your handy reference a 
few of the radio stations carrying the program. This will be increased just as soon 
as more extensive arrangements have been completed. Additional stations may be 
found in the forthcoming issues of THE SHADOW MAGAZINE. 



STATION CITY 

WBRC — Binninghain, Ala. 
WALA— Mobile, Ala. 
WMSD— SheeBeld, Ala. 
KELD— Eldorado, Ark. 

KIUP — Durango, Golo. 

KFXJ — Grand Junction, Col. 
KGHF— Pueblo, Colo. 

WMFJ — Daytona Beach, Fla. 
WRDW — Augusta, Ga. 
WAYX — Way cross, Ga. 

KSEI — Pocatello, Idaho. 
KTFI— Twin Falls, Idaho 
WMBD— Peoria, lU. 

WCBS— Springfield, 111. 
WREN — Lawrence, Kan. 
KALB — Alexandria, La. ' 
WJBO — Baton Rouge, La. 
WLBZ — Bangor, Me. 



STATION CITY 

WIBM — ^Jackson, Mich. 
WJDX — Jackson, Miss. 
WAML — Laurel, Miss. 

KGVO — Missoula, Mont. 
KGEZ— Kalispell, Mont. 
KMOX— St. Louis, Mo. 
KFVS — Cape Girardeau, Mo. 
WSNJ— Bridgeton, N. J. 
KGKY— Scotts Bluff, Neb. 
KAWM— Gallup, N. M. 
WGNY— Newburgh, N. Y. 
WFBL — Syracuse, N. Y. 
WSJS — Winston.Salem, N. C. 
WWNC— Asheville, N. C. 
WSOC — Charlotte, N. C. 
WDAY— Fargo, N. D. 

KVSO — Ardmore, Okla, 
KMED — Medford, Ore. 
KOOS — Marshfield, Ore. 



STATION CITY 

WHP — Harrisburg, Pa. 
WJAC — Johnstown, Pa. 
WORK— York, Pa. 

KABR — Aberdeen, S. D. 
WMC — Memphis, Tenn. 
KFDM — Beaumont, Texas. 
KRLD — Dallas, Texas. 
KNOW — Austin, Texas. 
KABC — San Antonio, Texas. 
KNET — Palestine, Texas. 
KRGV — Weslaco, Texas. 
KDYL — Salt Lake City, Utah. 
WLVA — Lynchburg, Va. 
WCAX — Burlington, Vt. 
WNBX— Springfield, Vf. 
KXRO — Aberdeen, Wash. 
WIBU — Beaver Dam, Wis. 
WRJN — Racine, Wis. 
KWYO— Sheridan, Wyo. 



Plan now to keep in regular touch with the Goodrich-Shadow Show. 
Watch your local newspapers and newsstands for the exact time of these 
broadcasts. 




76 



Seeds 




3>oi-9- 



A novelette 
grows old 
folk 



I T WAS a spore, microscopic in size. 
Its hard shell — resistant to the ut- 
ter dryness of interplanetary space 
— harbored a tiny bit of plant proto- 
plasm. That protoplasm, chilled almost 
to absolute zero, possessed no vital pulsa- 
tion now — only a grim potentiality, a 
savage capacity for revival, that was a 
challenge to Fate itself. 



Kaw, the Crow, recognized in this thing that it was alien— not of Earth — 
and that, to him, spelled danger to himself and all his kind. 




77 , 



OF THE Dusk 

of the days when Earth 
and cold — when all Earth*s 
are keening wits to survive — 

Raymond Z. Gallun 



For years the spore had been drift- 
ing and bobbing erratically between the 
paths of Earth and Mars, along with bil- 
lions of other spores of the same kind. 
Now the gravity of the Sun drew it a 
few million miles closer to Earth’s orbit, 
now powerful magnetic radiations from 
solar vortices forced it back toward the 
world of its origin. 

It seemed entirely a plaything of 
chance. And. of course, up to a point 
it was. But back of its erratic, uncon- 
scious wanderings, there was intelligence 
that had done its best to take advantage 
of the law of averages. 

The desire for rebirth and survival 
was the dominant urge of this intelli- 
gence. For this was during the latter 
days, when Earth itself was showing 
definite signs of senility, and Mars was 
near as dead as the Moon. 

Strange, intricate spore-pods, con- 
ceived as a man might conceive a new 
invention, but put into concrete form by 
a process of minutely exact growth con- 
trol, had burst explosively toward a 
black, spacial sky. In dusty clouds the 
spores had been hurled upward into the 
vacuum thinness that had once been an 
extensive atmosphere. Most of them 
had, of course, dropped back to the red, 
arid soil ; but a comparative few, buf- 
feted by feeble air currents, and meas- 
ured numerically in billions, had found 
their way from the utterly tenuous upper 
reaches of Mars’ gaseous envelope into 
the empty ether of the void. 

With elements of a conscious purpose 



added, the thing that was taking place 
was a demonstration of the ancient Ar- 
rhenius Spore Theory, which, countless 
ages ago, had explained the propagation 
of life from world to world. 

The huge, wonderful parent growths 
were left behind, to continue a hopeless 
fight for survival on a burnt-out world. 
During succeeding summer seasons they 
would hurl more spores into the inter- 
planetary abyss. But soon they them- 
selves would be only brown, mummied 
relics — one with the other relics of 
Mars ; the gray, carven monoliths ; the 
strange, hemispherical dwellings, dotted 
with openings arranged like the cells of 
a honeycomb. Habitations of an intelli- 
gent animal folk, long perished, who had 
never had use for halls or rooms, as 
such things are known to men, on Earth. 

THE ERA of utter death would come 
to Mars, when nothing would move on 
its surface except the shadows shifting 
across dusty deserts, and the molecules 
of sand and rock vibrating with a little 
warmth from the hot, though shrunken. 
Sun. Death — complete death! But the 
growths which were the last civilized 
beings of Mars had not originated there. 
Once they had been on the satellites of 
Jupiter, too. And before that — well, 
perhaps even the race memory of their 
kind had lost the record of those dim, 
distant ages. Always they had waited 
their chance, and when the time came — 
when a world was physically suited for 
their development — they had acted. 



n 



ASTOUNDING SCIENCE-FICTION 



A single spore was enough to supply 
the desired foothold on a planet. Almost 
inevitably — since chance is, in funda- 
mentals, a mathematical element depend- 
ing on time and numbers and repetition 
— that single spore reached the upper 
atmosphere of Earth. 

For months, it bobbed erratically in 
tenuous, electrified gases. It might have 
been shot into space again. Upward 
and downward it wandered; but with 
gravity to tug at its insignificant mass, 
probability favored its ultimate descent 
to the harsh surface. 

It found a resting place, at last, in a 
frozen desert gully. Around the gully 
were fantastic, sugar-loaf mounds. 
Near-by was one thin, ruined spire of 
blue porcelain — an empty reminder of a 
gentler era, long gone. 

The location thus given to it seemed 
hardly favorable in its aspect. For this 
was the northern hemisphere, locked 
now in the grip of a deadly winter. The 
air, depleted through the ages, as was 
the planet’s water supply, was arid and 
thin. The temperature, though not as 
rigorous and deadening as that of inter- 
planetary space, ranged far below zero. 
Mars in this age was near dead; Earth 
was a dying world. 

But perhaps this condition, in itself, 
was almost favorable. The spore be- 
longed to a kind of life developed to 
meet the challenge of a generally much 
less friendly environment than that of 
even this later-day Earth. 

There was snow in that desert gully 
— maybe a quarter-inch depth of it. The 
rays of the Sun — white and dwarfed 
after so many eons of converting its 
substance into energy — did not melt any 
of that snow even at noon. But this 
did not matter. The life principle within 
the spore detected favorable conditions 
for its germination, just as, in spring, the 
vital principle of Eiarthly seeds had done 
for almost incalculable ages. 

By a process parallel to that of sim- 
ple fermentation, a tiny amount of heat 



was generated within the spore. A few 
crystals of snow around it turned to 
moisture, a minute quantity of which 
the alien speck of life absorbed. Roots 
finer than spiderweb grew, groping into 
the snow. At night they were frozen 
solid, but during the day they resumed 
their brave activity. 

The spore expanded, but did not 
burst. For its shell was a protecting 
armor which must be made to increase 
in size gradually without rupture. 
Within it, intricate chemical processes 
were taking place. Chlorophyl there was 
absorbing sunshine and carbon dio.xide 
and water. Starch and cellulose and free 
oxygen were being produced. 

SO FAR, these processes were quite 
like those of common terrestrial flora. 
But there were differences. For one 
thing, the oxygen was not liberated to 
float in the atmosphere. It had been 
ages since such lavish waste had been 
possible on Mars, whose thin air had 
contained but a small quantity of o.xygen 
in its triatomic form, ozone, even when 
Earth was young. 

The alien thing stored its oxygen, 
compressing the gas into the tiny com- 
partments in its hard, porous, outer shell. 
The reason was simple. Oxygen, com- 
bining with starch in a slow, fennentive 
combustion, could produce heat to ward 
off the cold that would otherwise stop 
growth. 

The spore had become a plant now. 
First, it was no bigger than a pinhead. 
Then it increased its size to the dimen- 
sions of a small marble, its fuzzy, green- 
brown shape firmly anchored to the soil 
itself by its long, fibrous roots. Like 
any terrestrial growth, it was an intricate 
chemical laboratory, where transforma- 
tions took place that were not easy to 
comprehend completely. 

And now, perhaps, the thing was be- 
ginning to feel the first glimmerings of 
a consciousness, like a human child ris- 
ing out of the blurred, unremembering 



SEEDS OF THE DUSK 



79 



fog of birth. Strange, oily nodules, scat- 
tered throughout its tissues, connected by 
means of a complex network of deli- 
cate, white threads, which had the func- 
tions of a nervous system, were develop- 
ing and growing — giving to the spore- 
plant from Mars the equivalent of a 
brain. Here was a sentient vegetable 
in the formative stage. 

A sentient vegetable? Without in- 
telligence it is likely that the ancestors 
of this nameless invader from across the 
void would long ago have lost their bat- 
tle for survival. 

What senses were given to this strange 
mind, by means of which it could be 
aware of its environment ? Undoubtedly 
it possessed faculties of sense that could 
delect things in a way that was as far 
beyond ordinary human conception as 
vision is to those individuals who have 
been born blind. But in a more simple 
manner it must have been able to feel 
heat and cold and to hear sounds, the 
latter perhaps by the sensitivity of its 
fine, cilialike spines. And certainly it 
could see in a way comparable to that 
of a man. 

For, scattered over the round body 
of the plant, and imbedded deep in 
horny hollows in its shell, were little 
organs, lensed with a clear, vegetable 
substance. These organs were eyes, de- 
veloped, perhaps, from far more primi- 
tive light-sensitive cells, such as many 
forms of terrestrial flora possess. 

BUT DURING those early months, 
the spore plant saw little that could be 
interpreted as a threat, swiftly to be ful- 
filled. Winter ruled, and the native life 
of this desolate region was at a stand- 
still. 

There was little motion except that 
of keen, cutting winds, shifting dust, and 
occasional gusts of fine, dry snow. The 
white, shrunken Sun rose in the east, 
to creep with protracted slowness across 
the sky, shedding but the barest trace of 



warmth. Night came, beautiful and pur- 
ple and mysterious, yet bleak as the crys- 
talline spirit of an easy death. 

Through the ages. Earth’s rate of ro- 
tation had been much decreased by the 
tidal drag of Solar and Lunar gravities. 
The attraction of the Moon was now 
much increased, since the satellite was 
nearer to Terra than it had been in 
former times. Because of the decreased 
rate of rotation, the days and nights were 
correspondingly lengthened. 

All the world around the spore plant 
was a realm of bleak, unpeopled deso- 
lation. Only once, while the winter 
lasted, did anything happen to break the 
stark monotony. One evening, at moon- 
rise, a slender metal car flew across the 
sky with the speed of a bullet. A thin 
propelling streamer of fire trailed in its 
wake, and the pale moonglow was re- 
flected from its prow. A shrill, mechani- 
cal scream made the rarefied atmosphere 
vibrate, as the craft approached to a 
point above the desert gully, passed, and 
hurtled away, to leave behind it only a 
startling silence and an aching memory. 

For the spore plant did remember. 
Doubtless there was a touch of fear in 
that memory, for fear is a universal emo- 
tion, closely connected with the law of 
self-preservation, which is engrained in 
the texture of all life, regardless of its 
nature or origin. 

Men. Or rather, the cold, cruel, cun- 
ning little beings who were the children 
of men. The Itorloo, they called them- 
selves. The invader could not have 
known their form as yet, or the name 
of the creatures from w’hich they wer.e 
descended. But it could guess some- 
thing of their powers from the flying 
machine they had built. Inherited mem- 
ory must have played a part in giving 
the queer thing from across the void 
this dim comprehension. On other 
worlds its ancestors had encountered 
animal folk possessing a similar science. 
And the spore plant was surely aware 
that here on Earth the builders of this 



80 



ASTOUNDING SCIENCE-FICTION 



speeding craft were its most deadly ene- 
mies. 

The Itorloo, however, inhabiting their 
vast underground cities, had no knowl- 
edge that their planet had received an 
alien visitation — one which might have 
deadly potentialities. And in this fail- 
ure to know, the little spore plant, hid- 
den in a gully where no Itorloo foot 
had been set in a thousand years, was 
safe. 

Now there was nothing for it to do 
but grow and prepare to reproduce its 
kind, to be watchful for lesser enemies, 
and to develop its own peculiar powers. 

IT IS NOT to be supposed that it 
must always lack, by its very nature, 
an understanding of physics and chemis- 
try and biological science. It possessed 
no test tubes, or delicate instruments, as 
such things were understood by men. 
But it was gifted with something — call 
it an introspective sense — which enabled 
it to study in minute detail every sin- 
gle chemical and physical process that 
went on within its own substance. It 
could feel not only the juices coursing 
sluggishly through its tissues, but it could 
feel, too, in a kind of atomic pattern, 
the change of water and carbon dioxide 
into starch and free oxygen. 

Gift a man with the same power that 
the invader’s kind had acquired, per- 
haps by eons of pr^cticb and directed 
will — that of feeling vividly even the di- 
vision of cells, and the nature of the 
protoplasm in his own tissues — and it 
is not hard to believe that he would soon 
delve out even the ultimate secret of life. 
And in the secret of life there must be 
involved almost every conceivable phase 
of practical science. 

The spore plant proceeded with its 
marvelous self-education, part of which 
must have been only recalling to mind 
the intricate impressions of inherited 
memories. 

Meanwhile it studied carefully its 
bleak surroundings, prompted not only 



by fear, but by curiosity as well. To 
work effectively, it needed understand- 
ing of its environment. Intelligence it 
possessed beyond question; still it was 
hampered by many limitations. It was 
a plant, and plants have not an animal’s 
capacity for quick action, either of of- 
fense or defense. Here, forever, the 
entity from across the void was at a 
vast disadvantage, in this place of piti- 
less competition. In spite of all its pow- 
ers, it might now have easily been de- 
stroyed. 

The delicate, ruined tower of blue 
porcelain, looming up from the brink of 

the gully The invader, scrutinizing 

it carefully, for hours and days, soon 
knew every chink and crack and fanciful 
arabesque on its visible side. It was 
only a ruin, beautiful and mysterious 
alike by sunshine and moonlight, and 
when adorned with a fine sifting of snow. 
But the invader, lost on a strange world, 
could not be sure of its harmlessness. 

Close to the tower were those rude, 
high, sugar-loaf mounds, betraying a 
sinister cast. They were of hard-packed 
Earth, dotted with many tiny openings. 
But in the cold, arid winter, there was 
no sign of life about them now. 

All through those long, arctic months, 
the spore plant continued to develop, and 
to grow toward the reproductive stage. 
And it was making preparations too — 
combining the knowledge acquired by 
its observations with keen guesswork, 
and with a science apart from the man- 
ual fabrication of metal and other sub- 
stances. 

II. 

A MILDER season came at last. The 
Sun’s rays were a little warmer now. 
Some of the snow melted, moistening the 
ground enough to germinate Earthly 
seeds. Shoots sprang up, soon to develop 
leaves and grotesque, devilish-looking 
flowers. 

In the mounds beside the blue tower 
a slow awakening took place. Millions 



SEEDS OF THE DUSK 



81 



of little, hard, reddish bodies became ani- 
mated once more, ready to battle grim 
Nature for sustenance. The ages had 
done little to the ants, except to increase 
their fierceness and cunning. Almost 
any organic substances could serve them 
as food, and their tastes showed but lit- 
tle discrimination between one dainty 
and another. And it was inevitable, of 
course, that presently they should find 
the spore plant. 

Nor were they the latter’s only ene- 
mies, even in this desert region. Of the 
others, Kaw and his black-feathered 
brood were the most potent makers of 
trouble. Not because they would at- 
tempt active offense themselves, but be- 
cause they were able to spread news far 
and wide. 

Kaw wheeled alone now, high in the 
sunlight, his ebon wings outstretched, 
his cruel, observant little eyes studying 
the desolate terrain below. Buried in 
the sand, away from the cold, he and 
his mate and their companions had slept 
through the winter. Now Kaw was 
fiercely hungry. He could eat ants if 
he had to, but there should be better 
food available at this time of year. 

Once, his keen eyes spied gray move- 
ment far below. As if his poised and 
graceful flight was altered by the re- 
lease of a trigger, Kaw dived plummet- 
like and silent toward the ground. 

His attack was more simple and di- 
rect than usual. But it was successful. 
His reward was a large, long-tailed ro- 
dent, as clever as himself. The creature 
uttered squeaks of terror as meaningful 
as human cries for help. In a moment, 
however, Kaw split its intelligently 
rounded cranium with a determined 
blow from his strong, pointed beak. 
Bloody brains were devoured with in- 
delicate gusto, to be followed swiftly by 
the less tasty flesh of the victim. If 
Kaw had ever heard of table manners, 
he didn’t bother with them. Kaw was 
intensely practical. 

His crop full, Kaw was now free to 

AST— 6 



exercise the mischievous curiosity which 
he had inherited from his ancient for- 
bears. They who had, in the long-gone 
time when Earth was young, uprooted 
many a young corn shoot, and had yam- 
mered derisively from distant treetops 
when any irate farmer had gone after 
them with a gun. 

With a clownish skip of his black, 
scaly feet, and a show-offish swerve of 
his dusty, ebon wings, Kaw took to the 
air once more. Upward he soared, his 
white-lidded eyes directed again toward 
the ground, seeking something interest- 
ing to occupy his attention and energies. 

Thus, presently, he saw a brownish 
puflf that looked like smoke or dust in 
the gully beside the ruined blue tower at 
the pinnacle of which he and his mate 
were wont to build their nest in sum- 
mer. Sound came then — a dull, ring- 
ing pop. The dusty cloud expanded 
swiftly upward, widening and thinning 
until its opacity was dissipated into the 
clearness of the atmosphere. 

KAW WAS really startled. That 
this was so was evinced by the fact that 
he did not voice his harsh, rasping cry, 
as he would have done had a lesser oc- 
currence caught his attention. He turned 
back at first, and began to retreat, his 
mind recognizing only one possibility in 
what had occurred. Only the Itorloo, 
the Children of Men, as far as he knew, 
could produce explosions like that. And 
the Itorloo were cruel and dangerous. 

However, Kaw did not go far in his 
withdrawal. Presently — since there 

were no further alarming developments 
— he was circling back toward the 
source of the cloud and the noise. But 
for many minutes he kept what he con- 
sidered a safe distance, the while he tried 
to determine the nature of the strange, 
bulging, grayish-green thing down there 
in the gully. 

A closer approach, he decided finally, 
was best made from the ground. And 
so he descended, alighting several huu- 



82 



ASTOUNDING SCIENCE-FICTION 



dred yards distant from the narrow 
pocket in the desert. 

Thence he proceeded to walk cau- 
tiously forward, taking advantage of the 
cover of the rocks and dunes, his feath- 
ers gleaming with a dusty, rainbow 
sheen, his large head bobbing with the 
motion of his advance like any fowl’s. 
His manner was part laughably ludi- 
crous, part scared, and part determined. 

And then, peering from behind a large 
lK)ulder, he saw what he had come to 
see. It was a bulging, slightly flattened 
si^here, perhaps a yard across. From 
it projected flat, oval things of a gray- 
green color, like the leaves of a cactus. 
And from these, in turn, grew clublike 
protuberances of a hard, homy texture 
— spore-pods. One of them was blasted 
open, doubless by the pressure of gas ac- 
aimulated within it. These spore-pods 
were probably not as complexly or pow- 
erfully designed as those used by the 
parent growths on Mars, for 'they were 
intended for a simpler purpose. The en- 
tire plant bristled with sharp spines, and 
was furred with slender hairs, gleaming 
like little silver wires. 

Around the growth, thousands of ant 
bodies lay dead, and from its vicinity 
other thousands of living were retreat- 
ing. Kaw eyed these evidences criti- 
cally, guessing with wits as keen as those 
of a man of old their sinister significance. 
He knew, too, that presently other spore- 
pods would burst with loud, disturbing 
noises. 

Kaw felt a twinge of dread. Evolu- 
tion, working through a process of natu- 
ral selection — and, in these times of 
hardship and pitil^s competition, put- 
ting a premium on intelligence — had 
given to his kind a brain power far tran- 
scending that of his ancestors. He could 
observe, and could interpret his observa- 
tions with the same practical comprehen- 
sion which a primitive human being 
might display. But, like those primi- 
tives, he had developed, too, a capacity 
to feel superstitious awe. 



That gray-green thing of mystery had 
a fantastic cast which failed to identify 
it with — well — with naturalness. Kaw 
was no botanist, certainly ; still he could 
recognize the object as a plant of some 
kind. But those little, bright, eye-lenses 
suggested an unimaginable scrutiny. 
And those spines, silvery in sheen, sug- 
gested ghoulish animation, the existence 
of which Kaw could sense as a nameless 
and menacing unease. 

HE COULD guess, then, or imagine 
— or even know, perhaps — that here was 
an intruder who might well make itself 
felt with far-reaching consequences in 
the future. Kaw was aware of the sim- 
ple fact that most of the vegetation he 
was acquainted with grew from seeds or 
the equivalent. And he was capable of 
concluding that this flattened spheroid 
reproduced itself in a manner not mark- 
edly unfamiliar. That is, if one was to 
accept the evidence of the spore-pods. 
Billions of spores, scattering with the 
wind! What would be the result? 

Kaw would not have been so troubled, 
were it not for those crumpled thousands 
of ant bodies, and the enigma of their 
death. It was clear that the ants had 
come to feed on the invader — but they 
had perished. How ? By some virulent 
plant poison, perhaps? 

The conclusions which intelligence 
provides can produce fear where fear 
would otherwise be impossible. Kaw’s 
impulse was to seek safety in instant 
departure, but horror and curiosity fasci- 
nated him. Another deeper, more rea- 
soned urge commanded him. When a 
man smells smoke in his house at night, 
he does not run away; he investigates. 
And so it was with Kaw. 

He hopped forward cautiously toward 
the invader. A foot from its rough, 
curving side he halted. There, warily, 
as if about to attack a poisonous lizard, 
he steeled himself. Lightly and swiftly 
his beak shot forward. It touched the 
tip of a sharp spine. 



SEEDS OF THE DUSK 



83 




The result left Kaw dazed. It was as 
though he had received a stunning blow 
on the head. A tingling, constricting 
sensation shot through his body, and he 
was down, flopping in the dust. 

Electricity. Kaw had never heard of 
such a thing. Electricity generated 
chemically in the form of the invader. 



A harsh voice screamed “Iterloo! 
Iterloo!”, and he looked up, weapon 
ready. Kaw, the Crow, Hew low and 
screamed again, “Danger”. The 
Iterloo held his Hre. 



by a process analogous to that by which, 
in «lim antiquity, it had been generated 
in the bodies of electric eels and other 
similar creatures. 

However, there was a broad difference 
here between the subject and the anal- 
ogy. Electric eels had never understood 



the nature of their power, for they were 
as unresponsible for it as they were 
unresponsible for the shape of the flesh 
in which they had been cast. The spore 
plant, on the other hand, comprehended 
minutely. Its electric organs had been 
minutely preplanned and conceived be- 




84 



ASTOUNDING SCIENCE-FICTION 



fore one living cell of their structure had 
been caused to grow on another. And 
these organs were not inherited, but were 
deisgned to meet the more immediate 
needs of self-protection. During the win- 
ter, the invader, studying its surround- 
ings, had guessed well. 

Slowly Kaw’s brain cleared. He heard 
an ominous buzzing, and knew that it 
issued from the plant. But what he did 
not know was that, like the electric or- 
gans, the thing’s vocal equipment was in- 
Aented for possible use in its new en- 
vironment. For days, since the coming 
of spring, the invader had been listen- 
ing to sounds of various kinds, and had 
recognized their importance on Earth. 

Now Kaw had but one thought, and 
that was to get away. Still dazed and 
groggy, he leaped into the air. From 
behind him, in his hurried departure, he 
heard a dull plop. More billions of 
spores, mixing with the wind, to be 
borne far and wide. 

BUT NOW, out of his excitement, 
Kaw drew a reasoned and fairly definite 
purpose. He had a fair idea of what 
he was going to do, even though the 
course of action he had in mind might 
involve him with the greatest of his ene- 
mies. Yet, when it came to a choice, he 
would take the known in preference to 
tlie unknown. 

He soared upward toward the bright 
I)lue of the heavens. The porcelain 
tower, the ant hills, and the low mounds 
which marked the entrances to the ro- 
dent colonies slipped swiftly behind. As 
if the whole drab landscape \vere made 
to move on an endless belt. 

Kaw was looking for his mate, and 
for the thirty-odd, black-winged indi- 
viduals who formed his tribe. - Singly and 
in small groups, he contacted and col- 
lected them. Loud, raucous cries, each 
with a definite -verbal meaning, were ex- 
changed. Menace was on the Earth — 
liizarre, nameless menace. Excitement 
grew to fever pitch. 



Dusk, beautiful and soft and forbid- 
ding, found the bird clan assembled in 
a chamber high-placed in a tremendous 
edifice many miles from where Kaw had 
made his discovery. The building be- 
longed to the same gentle culture which 
had produced the blue porcelain tower. 
The floor of the chamber was doubtless 
richly mosaiced. But these were relics 
of departed splendor now thickly masked 
with dust and filth. 

From the walls, however, painted 
landscapes of ethereal beauty, and the 
faces of a happy humankind of long ago 
peeped through the gathering shadows. 
They were like ghosts, a little awed at 
what had happened to the world to 
which they had once belonged. Those 
gentle folk had dwelt in a kindlier cli- 
mate which was now stripped forever 
from .the face of the Earth. And they 
had been wiped out by creatures who 
were human too, but of a different, cru- 
eler race. 

Through delicately carven screens of 
pierced marble, far up on the sides of 
the chamber’s vast, brooding rotunda, 
the fading light of day gleamed, like a 
rose glow through the lacework of 
fairies. 

But this palace of old, dedicated to 
laughter and fun and luxury, and to 
the soaring dreams of the fine arts, was 
now only a chill, dusty gathering place 
for a clan of black-winged, gruesome 
harpies. 

They chuckled and chattered and 
cawed, like the crows of dead eras. But 
these sounds, echoing eerily beneath 
cloistered arches, dim and abhorrent in 
the advancing gloom of night, differed 
from that antique yammering. It con- 
stituted real, intelligent conversation. 

Kaw, perched high on a fancifully 
wrought railing of bronze, green with the 
patina of age, urged his companions with 
loud cries, and with soft, pleading notes. 
In his own way, he had some of the 
qualities of a master orator. But. as ail 
through an afternoon of similar arguing. 



SEEDS OF THE DUSK 



85 



he was getting nowhere. His tribe was 
afraid. And so it was becoming more 
and more apparent that he must under- 
take his mission alone. Even Teka, his 
mate, would not accompany him. 

At last Kaw ruffled his neck feathers, 
and shook his head violently in an avian 
gesture of disgust. He leaped from his 
perch and shot through a glassless win- 
dow with an angry scream that was like 
the curse of a black ghoul. 

It was the first time that he had ever 
undertaken a long journey at night. But 
in his own judgment, necessity was such 
that no delay could be tolerated. 

The stars were sharp and clear, the 
air chill and frosty. The ground was 
dotted sparsely with faint glimmerings 
from the chimneys of the crude furnaces 
which, during the colder nights of spring 
and fall, warmed the underground rodent 
colonies. 

After a time the Moon rose, huge and 
yellow, like the eye of a monster. In 
that gloom and silence, Kaw found it 
easy to feel the creeping and impercepti- 
ble, yet avalanching, growth of horror. 
He could not be sure, of course, that he 
was right in his guess that the mission 
he had undertaken was grimly impor- 
tant. But his savage intuition was keen. 

The Itorloo — the Children of Men — 
he must see them, and tell them what 
he knew. Kaw was aware that the Itor- 
loo had no love for any but themselves. 
But they were more powerful than the 
winds and the movements of the Sun 
and Moon themselves. They would find 
a swift means to defeat the silent danger. 

And so, till the gray dawn, Kaw flew 
on and on, covering many hundreds of 
miles, until he saw a low dome of metal, 
capping a hill. The soft half-light of 
early morning sharpened its outlines to 
those of a beautiful, ebon silhouette, 
peaceful and yet forbidding. Beneath it, 
as Kaw knew, was a shaft leading down 
to the wondrous underworld of the Itor- 
loo, as intriguing to his mind as a shad- 
owland of magic. 



Fear tightened its constricting web 
around Kaw’s heart — but retreat was 
something that must not be. There was 
too much at stake ever to permit a mo- 
ment of hesitation. 

Kaw swung into a wide arc, circling 
the dome. His long wings, delicately 
poised for a soaring glide, did not flap 
now, but dipped and rose to capture and 
make use of the lifting power of every 
vagrant wisp of breeze. And from his 
lungs issued a loud, raucous cry. 

“Itorloo!” he screamed. “Itorloo!” 

The word, except for its odd, parrot- 
like intonation, was pronounced in an 
entirely human manner. Kaw, in com- 
mon with his crow ancestors, pos- 
sessed an aptitude for mimicry of the 
speech of men. 

Tensely he waited for a sign, as he 
swung lower and nearer to the dome. 

III. 

ZAR FELT irritable. He did not like 
the lonely surface vigil and the routine 
astronomical checkings that constituted 
his duty. All night he’d sat there at 
his desk with signal lights winking 
around’him, helping surface watchers at 
the other stations check the position of 
a new meteor swarm by means of cross- 
ing beams of probe rays. 

Angles, distances, numbers ! Zar was 
disgusted. Why didn’t the construction 
crews hurry ? The whole race could have 
been moved to Venus long ago, and 
might just as well have been. For as far 
as Zar could see, there was no real rea- 
son to retain a hold on the burnt-out 
Earth. The native Venusians should 
have been crushed a century back. There 
wasn’t any reason why* this pleasant 
task shouldn’t have been accomplished 
then — no reason except stupid, official 
inertia ! 

The sound of a shrill bird cry, throb- 
bing from the pickup diaphragm on the 
wall, did not add any sweetening potion 
to Zar’s humor. At first he paid no at- 



86 



ASTOUNDING SCIENCE-FICTION 



tentioii; but the insistent screaming of 
the name of his kind — “Itorloo! Itor- 
loo!” — at length aroused him to angry 
action. 

His broad, withered face, brown and 
hideous and goblinlike, twisted itself into 
an ugly grimace. He bounded up from 
his chair, and seized a small, pistollike 
weapon. 

A moment later he was out on the 
sandy slopes of the hill, looking up at 
tlie black shape that swooped and darted 
timidly, close to his head. On impulse 
Zar raised his weapon, no thought of 
compassion in his mind. 

But Kaw screamed again: “Itorloo! 
Loaaah 1” 

In Zar’s language, “Loaaah!” meant 
“Danger!” very emphatically. Zar’s 
hand, bent on execution, was stayed for 
the moment at least. His shrewd little 
eyes narrowed, and from his lips there 
issued yammering sounds which consti- 
tuted an understandable travesty of the 
speech of Kaw’s kind. 

“.Speak your own tongue, creature!” 
he ordered sharply. “I can understand !” 

Still swooping and darting nervously, 
Kaw screamed forth his story, describing 
in quaint manner the thing he had seen, 
employing comparisons such as any 
primitive savage would use. In this way 
the invader was like a boulder, in that 
way it was like a thorn -cactus, and in 
other ways it resembled the instruments 
of death which the Itorloo employed. 
In all ways it was strange, and unlike 
anything ever seen before. 

And Zar listened with fresh and cal- 
culated attention, getting from this bird 
creature the information he required to 
locate the strange miracle. Kaw was ac- 
curate and clear enough in giving his 
directions. 

Zar might have forgotten his inherent 
ruthlessness where his feathered in- 
former was concerned, had not Kaw be- 
come a trifle too insistent in his exhor- 
taJions to action. He lingered too long 
and screamed too loudly. 



Irritated, Zar raised his weapon. Kaw 
swept away at once, but there was no 
chance for him to get out of range. In- 
visible energy shot toward him. Black 
feathers were torn loose, and floated 
aflame in the morning breeze. Kaw gave 
a shrill shriek of agony and reproach. 
Erratically he wavered to the ground. 

ZAR DID NOT even glance toward 
him, but retraced his way leisurely into 
the surface dome. An hour later, how- 
ever, having received permission from 
his superiors, he had journeyed across 
those hundreds of miles to the gully be- 
side the blue porcelain tower. And there 
he bent over the form of the invader. 
Zar was somewhat awed. He had never 
been to Mars. For two hundred tliou- 
sand years or more, no creature from 
Earth had ever visited that planet. The 
Itorloo were too practical to attempt 
such a useless venture, and their more 
recent predecessors had lacked some of 
the adventurous incentive required for 
so great and hazardous a journey. 

But Zar had perused old records, be- 
longing to an era half a million years 
gone by. He knew that this gray-green 
thing was at least like the flora of an- 
cient Mars. Into his mind, matter-of- 
fact for the most part, came the glim- 
merings of a mighty romance, accentu- 
ating within him a consciousness of 
nameless dread, and of grand interplane- 
tary distances. 

Spines. Bulging, hard-shelled, pulpy 
leaves that stored oxygen under pres- 
sure. . Chlorophyl that absorbed sunshine 
and made starch, just as in an ordinary 
Earthly plant. Only the chlorophyl of 
this growth was beneath a thick, trans- 
lucent shell, which altered the quality 
of the light it could reflect. That was 
why astronomers in the pre-interplane- 
tary era had doubted the existence of 
vegetation on Mars. Green plants of 
Terra, when photographed with infra- 
red light, looked silvery, like things of 
frost. But — because of their shells — 



SEEDS OF THE DUSK 



87 



Martian vegetation could not betray its 
presence in the same manner. 

Zar shuddered, though the morning 
air was not chill by his standards. The 
little gleaming orbs of the invader 
seemed to scrutinize him critically and 
cohlly, and with a vast wisdom. Zar saw 
the shattered spore-pods, knowing that 
their contents now floated in the air, like 
dust — floated and settled — presenting a 
subtle menace whose tool was the unex- 
pected, and against which — because of 
the myriad numbers of the widely scat- 
tered spores — only the most drastic 
methods could prevail. 

Belatedly, then, anger came. Zar 
drew a knife from his belt. Half in 
fury and half in experiment, he struck 
the invader, chipping off a piece of its 
shell. He felt a sharp electric shock, 
though by no means strong enough to 
kill a creature of his size. From the 
wound he made in the plant, oxygen siz- 
zed softly. But the invader offered no 
further defense. For the present it had 
reached the end of its resources. 

Zar bounded back. His devilish little 
weapon flamed then, for a full two min- 
utes. When he finally released pressure 
on its trigger, there was only a great, 
smouldering, glowing hole in the ground 
where the ghoulish thing from across 
space had stood. 

Such was Zar’s and the entire Itorloo 
race’s answer to the intruder. Swift 
destruction ! Zar chuckled wickedly. 
And there were ways to rid Earth of the 
treacherous menace of the plant intelli- 
gences of Mars entirely, even though 
they would take time. 

Besides there was Venus, the world 
of promise. Soon half of the Itorloo 
race would be transported there. The 
others certainly could be accommodated 
if it became necessary. 

NECESSARY? Zar laughed. He 
must be getting jittery. What had the 
Itorloo to fear from those inert, vegetable 
things? Now he aimed his weapon to- 



ward the blue tower, and squeezed the 
trigger. Weakened tiles crumbled and 
fell down with a hollow, desolate rattle 
that seemed to mock Zar’s ruthlessness. 

Suddenly he felt sheepish. To every 
intelligent being there is a finer side 
that prompts and criticizes. And for a 
moment Zar saw himself and his people 
a little more as they really were. 

Unlike the lesser creatures, the Chil- 
dren of Men had not advanced very 
much mentally. The ups and downs of 
history had not favored them. War had 
reversed the benefits of natural selection, 
destroying those individuals of the spe- 
cies best suited to carry it on to greater 
glory. Zar knew this, and perhaps his 
senseless assault upon the ruined build- 
ing was but a subconscious gesture of 
resentment toward the people of long 
ago who had been kinder and wiser and 
happier. 

Zar regretted his recent act of destroy- 
ing the spore plant. It should have been 
preserved for study. But now — well — 
what was done could not be changed. 

He entered his swift, gleaming rocket 
car. When he closed its cabin door be- 
hind him, it seemed that he was shutting 
out a horde of mocking, menacing 
ghosts. 

In a short while he was back at the 
surface station. Relieved there of his 
duty by another little brown man, he 
descended the huge cylindrical shaft 
which dropped a mile to a region that 
was like the realm of the Cyclops; 
Thrumming sounds, winking lights, 
shrill shouts of the workers, blasts of 
incandescent flame, and the colossal maj- 
esty of gigantic machines, toiling tire- 
lessly. 

In a vast, pillard plaza the keels of 
spaceships were being laid — spaceships 
for the migration and the conquest. In 
perhaps a year — a brief enough time for 
so enormous a task — they would soar 
away from Earth, armed to the teeth. 
There would be thousands of the craft 
then, for all over the world, in dozens 



83 



ASTOUNDING SCIENCE-FICTION 



of similar underground places, they were 
in process of construction. 

Zar’s vague fears were dissipated in 
thoughts of conquest to come. The 
Venus folk annihilated in withering 
clouds of flame. The glory of the Itor- 
loo carried on and on 

IV. 

KAW WAS NOT dead. That this 
was so was almost a miracle, made pos- 
sible, perhaps, by a savage, indomitable 
will to live. In his small bird body 
there was a fierce, burning courage that 
compensated for many of his faults. 

For hours he lay there on the desert 
sand, a pathetic and crumpled bundle of 
tattered feathers, motionless except for 
his labored breathing, and the blinking 
of his hate-filled eyes. Blood dripped 
slowly from the hideous, seared wound 
on his breast, and his whole body ached 
with a vast, dull anguish. 

Tow'ard sundown, however, he man- 
aged to hobble and flutter forward a few 
rc>ds. Here he buried himself shallowdy 
in the sand, where his chilled body would 
be' protected from the nocturnal cold. 

For three days he remained thus in- 
terred. He was too weak and sick to 
leave his burrow'. Bitterness toward 
Zar and the other cruel Itorloo, he did 
not feel. Kaw' had lived too long in this 
harsh region to e.xpect favors. But a 
black fury stormed within him, never- 
theless—a black fury as agonizing as 
physical pain. He wanted revenge. No, 
he needed revenge as much as he needed 
the breath of life. He did not know that 
Itorloo plans directed against the intrud- 
ing spores from Mars were already un- 
der way, and that — as a by-product — 
they would destroy his own kind, and 
all primitive life on the surface of the 
Earth. 

Kaw left his hiding place on the 
fourth day. Luck favored him, for he 
found a bit of carrion — part of the dead 
body of an antelopelike creature. 



Somehow, through succeeding weeks 
and days, he managed to keep alive. The 
mending of his injured flesh was slow 
indeed, for the burnt wound was unclean. 
But he started tow'ard home, hopping 
along at first, then flying a little, a hun- 
dred yards at a time. Tedium and pain 
were endless. But the fiendish light of 
what must seem forever fruitless hatred, 
never faded in those wicked, wdiite-lid- 
ded eyes. Frequently Kaw’s long, black 
beak snapped in a vicious expression of 
boundless determination. 

Weeks of long days became a month, 
and then two months. Starved to a 
black-clad skeleton, and hopeless of ever 
being fit to hunt again, Kaw tottered 
into a deep gorge one evening. Utterly 
spent, he sank to the ground here, his 
brain far too weary to take note of any 
subtle unusualness which the deepening 
shadows half masked. 

He scarcely saw the rounded things 
scattered here. Had he noticed them, 
his blurred vision would have named 
them small boulders and nothing more. 
Fury, directed at the Itorloo, had made 
him almost forget the spore plants. He 
did not know that this was to be a place 
of magic. Chance and the vagrant winds 
had made it so. A hundred spores, out 
of many billions, had lodged here. Con- 
ditions had been just right for their swift 
development. It was warm, but not too 
warm. And there was moisture too. 
Distantly Kaw heard the trickle of water. 
He wanted to get to it, but his feeble- 
ness prevented him. 

HE MUST have slept, then, for a 
long time. It seemed that he awoke at 
tlie sound of an odd buzzing, which 
may have possessed hypnotic properties. 
He felt as weak and stiff as before, but 
he was soothed and peaceful now, in 
spite of his thirst and hunger. 

Fie looked about. The gorge was 
deep and shadowy. A still twilight per- 
vaded it, though sunshine gilded its bulg- 
ing, irregular lips far above. These de- 



SEEDS OF THE DUSK 



89 



tails he took in in a moment. 

He looked, then, at the grotesque 
shapes around him — things which, in the 
deeper darkness, he had thought to be 
only boulders. But now he saw that 
they were spore plants, rough, eerie, 
brooding, with their little, lensed light- 
sensitive organs agleam. 

The excitement of terror seized him, 
and he wanted to flee, as from a deadly 
enemy. But this urge did not last long. 
The hypnotic buzz, which issued from 
the diaphragmic vocal organs of the 
plants, soothed and soothed and soothed, 
until Kaw felt very relaxed. 

There were dead ants around him, 
doubtless .the victims of electrocution. 
Since no better food was within reach, 
Kaw hopped here and there, eating 
greedily. 

After that he hobbled to the brackish 
spring that dripped from the wall, and 
drank. Next he dropped to the ground, 
his fresh drowsiness characterized by 
sleepy mutterings about himself, his peo- 
ple, and the all-wise Itorloo. And it 
seemed, presently, that the buzzing of 
the invaders changed in character at last, 
seeming to repeat his own mutterings 
clumsily, like a child learning to talk. 

“Kaw! Itorloo!” And other words 
and phrases belonging to the speech of 
the crow clans. 

It was the beginning of things miracu- 
lous and wonderful for Kaw, the black- 
feathered rascal. Many suns rose and 
set, but somehow he felt no urge to 
wander farther toward his home region. 
He did not know the Lethean fascina- 
tion of simple hypnotism. True, he sal- 
lied afield farther and farther, as his 
increasing strength permittedf He 
hunted now, eating bugs and beetles for 
the most part. But always he returned 
to the gorge, there to listen to the weird 
growths, buzzing, chattering, speaking 
to him in his own tongue. In them 
there seemed somehow to be a vague 
suggestion of the benignance of some 



strange, universal justice, in spite of 
their horror. 

And night and day, rocket cars, 
streamlined and gleaming, swept over 
the desert. Now and then beams of en- 
ergy were unleashed from them, whip- 
ping the sand into hot flame, destroy- 
ing the invading spore plants tliat had 
struck root here and there. Only the 
law of chance kept them away from the 
gorge, as doubtless it allowed them to 
miss other hiding, places of alien life. 
For the wilderness was wide. 

But this phase of the Itorloo battle 
against the invading spore plants was 
only a makeshift preliminary, intended 
to keep the intruders in check. Only 
the Itorloo themselves knew about the 
generators now being constructed far 
underground — generators which, with 
unseen emanations, could wipe out every 
speck of living protoplasm on the ex- 
posed crust of the planet. Theirs was 
a monumental task, and a slow one. But 
they meant to be rid, once and for all, 
of the subtle threat which had come per- 
haps to challenge their dominion of the 
Earth. Kaw and his kind, the rodents, 
the ants, and all the other simple Peo- 
ple of the Dusk of Terra’s Greatness, 
were seemingly doomed. 

KAW’S HATRED of the Children 
of Men was undimmed, more justly than 
he was aware. Thus it was easy for 
him to listen when he was commanded : 
“Get an Itorloo! Bring him here! 
Alone ! On foot !” 

Zar was the logical individual to pro- 
duce, for he was the nearest, the most 
readily available. But summer was al- 
most gone before Kaw encountered the 
right opportunity, though he watched 
with care at all times. 

Evening, with Venus and the Moon 
glowing softly in the sky, Kaw was 
perched on a hilltop, close to the great 
surface dome, watching as he had often 
watched before. Out of its cylindrical 
hangar, Zar’s flier darted, and then 



90 



ASTOUNDING SCIENCE-FICTION 



swung in a slow arc. Presently it 
headed at a leisurely pace into the north- 
west. For once its direction was right, 
and it was not traveling too fast for Kaw 
to keep pace with it. Clearly its pilot 
was engaged in a rambling pleasure 
jaunt, which had no definite objective. 

Kaw, pleased and excited, fell in be- 
hind at a safe distance. There he re- 
mained until the craft was near the 
gorge. Now there was danger, but if 
things were done right 

He flapped his wings violently to 
catch up with his mechanical quarry. 
He screamed loudly: “Itorloo! Itor- 
loo! Descend! Descend! I am Kaw, 
who informed you of the unknowns long 
ago! I would show you more! More! 
More!” All this in shrill, avian chat- 
terings. 

Kaw’s trickery was naively simple. 
But Zar heard, above the noise of his 
rocket blasts. Suspicion? He felt it, 
of course. There was no creature in 
this era who accepted such an invita- 
tion without question. Yet he was well 
armed. In his own judgment he should 
be quite safe. Curiosity led him on. 

He shut off his rocket motors, and 
uttered the bird jargon, questioning irri- 
tably : “Where ? What is it, black 

trickster ?” 

Kaw skittered about defensively. 
“Descend!” he repeated.. “Descend to 
the ground! The thing that Ijears you 
cannot take you where we must go!” 

The argument continued for some lit- 
tle time, primitive wit matching curi- 
osity and suspicion. 

And meanwhile, in the gloomy gorge 
cut in vague geologic times by some 
gushing stream, entities waited patiently. 
Sap flowed in their tissues, as in the 
tissues of any other vegetation, but the 
fine hairs on their forms detected sounds, 
and their light-sensitive cells served as 
eyes. Within their forms were organs 
equivalent to human nerve and brain. 
They did not use tools or metals, but 
worked in another way, dictated by their 



vast disadvantages when compared to 
animal intelligences. Yet they had their 
advantages, too. 

Now they waited, dim as bulking 
shadows. They detected the excited 
cries of Kaw, who was their instrument. 
And perhaps they grew a little more 
tense, like a hunter in a blind, when he 
hears the quacking of ducks through 
a fog. 

There was a grating of pebbles, and 
a little brown man, clad in a silvery 
tunic, stepped cautiously into view. 
There was a weapon clutched in his 
slender hand. He paused, as if sud- 
denly awed and fearful. But no oppor- 
tunity to retreat was given him. 

A SPORE-POD exploded with a 
loud plop in the confined space. A mass 
of living dust filled the gorge, like a 
dense, opaque cloud, choking, blinding. 
Zar squeezed the trigger of his weapon 
impulsively. Several of the invaders 
were blasted out of existence. Stones 
clattered down from where the unaimed 
beam of energy struck the wall. 

Panic seized the little man, causing 
him to take one strangling breath. In 
a few moments he was down, writhing 
helpless on the ground. Choked by 
the finely divided stuff, his consciousness 
seemed to drop into a black hole of in- 
finity. He, Zar, seemed about to pay 
for his misdeeds.. With a mad fury he 
heard the derisive screams of Kaw, who 
had tricked him. But he could not curse 
in return, and presently his thouglits 
vanished away to nothing. 

Awareness of being alive came back 
to him very slowly and painfully. At 
first he felt as though he had pneumonia 
— fever, suffocation, utter vagueness of 
mind. Had the spores germinated within 
his lungs, he would surely have died. 
But they did not, there ; conditions were 
too moist and warm for them. Gradu- 
ally he coughed them up. 

He felt cold with a bitter, aching 
chill, for the weather had changed with 



SEEDS OF THE DUSK 



91 



the lateness of the season. Fine snow 
sifted down into the gorge from clouds 
that were thin and pearly and sun- 
gilded. Each tiny crystal of ice glit- 
tered with a thousand prismatic hues 
as it slowly descended. And the silence 
was deathly, bearing a burden of almost 
tangible desolation. In that burden 
there seemed to crowd all the antique 
history of a world — history whose grand 
movement shaded gradually toward 
stark, eternal death. 

Zar wanted to flee this awful place 
that had become like part of another 
planet. He jerked his body as if to 
scramble feebly to his feet. He found 
then that he was restrained by cordlike 
tendrils, hard as horn, and warm with 
a faint, fermentive, animallike heat. 
Like the beat of a nameless pulse, tiny 
shocks of electricity tingled his flesh in 
a regular rhythm. 

It was clear to Zar that while he had 
been inert the tendrils had fastened 
themselves slowly around him, in a way 
that was half like the closing of an an- 
cient Venus Flytrap, carnivorous plant 
of old, and half like the simple creeping 
of a vine on a wall. 

Those constricting bonds were tight- 
ening now. Zar could feel the tiny 
thorns with which they were equipped 
biting into his flesh. He screamed in 
horror and pain. His cries echoed hol- 
lowly in the cold gorge. The snow, 
slowly sifting, and the silence, both 
seemed to mock — by their calm, pitiless 
lack of concern — the plight in which he 
found himself. 

And then a voice, chattering faintly 
in the language of Kaw the Crow : “Be 
still. Peace. Peace. Peace. Peace. 
Peace ” 

Gradually the sleepy tone quieted 
Zar, even though he was aware that 
whatever the invaders might do to him 
could bring him no good. 

Plants with voices. Almost human 
voices! Some sort of tympanic organs, 
hidden, perhaps, in some of those pulpy 



leaves, Zar judged. From the records 
of the old explorations of Mars, he 
knew a little about these intruders, and 
their scheme of life. Organs, with the 
functions of mechanical contrivances, 
conceived and grown as they were 
needed! An alien science, adapted to 
the abilities and limitations of vegeta- 
tive intelligences— intelligences that had 
never controlled the mining and smelt- 
ing and shaping of metal! 

ZAR, tight in the clutch of those weird 
monstrosities, realized some of their 
power. Strangely it did not affect the 
hypnotic calm that wrapped him. 

Mars. These wondrous people of the 
dusk of worlds had survived all animal 
life on the Red Planet. They had 
spanned Mars in a vast, irregularly 
formed network, growing along dry 
river beds, and the arms of vanished 
seas. They had not been mere individ- 
uals, for they had cooperated to form 
a civilization of a weird, bizarre sort. 
Great, hollow roots, buried beneath the 
ground, had drawn water from melting 
polar snows. Those roots had been 
like water conduits. A rhythmic pulsa- 
tion within them had pumped the water 
across thousands of miles of desert, pro- 
viding each plant along the way with 
moisture, even on that dying and almost 
dehydrated world. The canals of Mars ! 
Yes, a great irrigation system, a great 
engineering feat — -but out of the scope of 
Itorloo methods entirely. 

And through the living texture of 
those immense joining roots, too, had 
doubtless flown the impulses ei thoughts 
and commands — the essence of leader- 
ship and security. Even now, when 
Mars was all but dead, its final civiliza- 
tion must still be trying to fight on. 

Strange, wonderful times those old 
explorers had seen. Cold sunlight on 
bizarre ruins, left by extinct animal folk. 
Thin air and arctic weather, worse than 
that of Earth in the present age. Death 
everywhere, except for those vegetative 



92 



ASTOUNDING SCIENCE-FICTION 




beings grouped in immense, spiny, rib- 
bonlike stretches. Dim shapes at night, 
under hurtling Phobos, the nearer moon, 
and Deimos, her leisurely sister. Zar 
did not know just how it had happened, 
but he had heard that only a few of 
those human adventurers had escaped 
from the people of Mars with their lives. 

Zar’s thoughts rambled on in a de- 
tached way that was odd for him. Per- 



haps Nature had a plan that she used 
over and over again. On Terra the great 
reptiles of the Mesozoic period had died 



A soft explosion of spore-pods sent powdery, choking dust of life into his 
face. Then Kaw watched him slump and sleep beside the alien plant. 



SEEDS OF THE DUSK 



93 



out to be replaced by mammals. Men 
and the Oiildren of Men had become 
supreme at last. 

Succession after succession, according 
to some well-ordered scheme? In the 
desolate quiet of falling snow, tempered 
only by the muted murmur of the frigid 
wind, it was easy for Zar to fall prey 
to such a concept, particularly since he 
was held powerless in the grasp of the 
invaders. Tendrils, thorny, stinging ten- 
drils, which must have been grown pur- 
posely to receive an Itorloo captive! 
Zar could realize, then, a little of the 
fantastic introspective sense which gave 
these beings a direct contact with the 
physical secrets of their forms. And in 
cvmsequence a knowledge of chemistry 
and biology that was clearer than any- 
thing that an Itorloo might be expected 
to attain along similar lines. 

Zar wanted to shriek, but his awe and 
his^ weakness strangled him beyond 
more than the utterance of a gasping 
sigh. 

THEN the mighty spirit of his kind 
reasserted itself. Zar was aware that 
most probably he himself would pres- 
ently perish; but the Itorloo, his kind, 
his real concern, could never lose! Not 
with all the mighty forces at their com- 
mand ! To suppose that they could be 
defeated by the sluggish intruders was 
against reason! In a matter of months 
— when the preparations for the vast 
purification process had been completed 
— Earth would be free of those intruders 
once more. Zar’s brown face contracted 
into a leer of defiance that had a touch 
of real greatness. Brutality, force, cun- 
ning, and the capacity for quick action 
— those were the tools of the Itorloo, 
but they had strength too. Zar was no 
fool — no short-sighted individual who 
leaps to hasty, optimistic conclusions — 
but in a contest between the Itorloo and 
the invaders there could be but a single 
outcome by any standard within Zar’s 
reach. 



In this belief, he was comforted, and 
his luck, presently, after long hours of 
suffering, seemed far better than he had 
any reason to hope for. The hard, 
thorny tendrils unquestionably were re- 
laxing from about him a very little. He 
could not guess why, and in consequence 
he suspected subtle treachery. But he 
could find no reason to suppose that 
some hidden motive was responsible. 

All his avid energies were concen- 
trated, now, on escape. He concluded 
that perhaps the cold had forced the 
slight vegetable relaxation, and he pro- 
ceeded to make the best possible use of 
his chances. Some time during the night 
his straining hands reached the hilt of 
his knife. Not long afterward Zar 
clutched his blast gun. 

Zar limped stiffly to his flier, cursing 
luridly; while behind him in the gorge, 
red firelight flickered, and wisps of 
smoke lanced into the frigid wind. 

Zar wished that Kaw was somewhere 
in sight, to receive his wrath too. The 
ebon rascal had vanished. 

Winter deepened during succeeding 
days. The Itorloo in their buried cities 
felt none of its rigors, however. 

Zar had submitted to a physical ex- 
amination after his weird adventure, and 
had been pronounced fit. And of all his 
people he seemed to toil the most con- 
scientiously. 

The Venus project. Soon the Chil- 
dren of Men would be masters of that 
youthful, sunward planet. The green 
plains and jungles, and the blue skies 
of Venus. Soon! Soon! Soon! Zar 
was full of dreams of adventure and 
brutal pleasure. 

Periodically the rocket craft of the 
Itorloo sallied forth from the cities to 
stamp out the fresh growth of the in- 
vaders. The oxygen-impregnated sub- 
stance of their forms flame in desert 
gullies, and along the rims of shrivelled 
salt seas, where the spore plants were 
trying to renew their civilization. Most 
of them did not get a chance, even, to 



94 



ASTOUNDING SCIENCE-FICTION 



approach maturity. But because even 
one mature survivor could pollute the 
Earth with billions of spores, impossible 
to destroy otherwise, the purification 
process must be carried through. 

Spring again, and then mid-summer. 
The spaceships were almost ready to 
leap Venus-ward on the great adven- 
ture. The generators, meant to spread 
life-destroying emanations over the crust 
and atmosphere above, stood finished 
and gleaming in the white-domed cav- 
erns that housed them. 

Zar looked at the magnificent, glitter- 
ing array in the spaceship construction 
chamber of his native community with 
pride and satisfaction. 

“Tomorrow,” he said to a companion, 
a fierce light in his eyes. 

The other nodded, the white glare of 
the atomic welding furnaces lighting up 
his features, and betraying there a wolf- 
ish grin of pleasure. 

“Tomorrow,” Zar repeated, an odd 
sort of vagueness in his tone. 

V. 

KAW HAD long ago rejoined his 
tribe. Life, during those recent months, 
had been little different from what had 
been usual in the crow clans for thou- 
sands of years. For purposes of safety, 
Kaw had led his flock into a desert fast- 
ness where patrolling Itorloo fliers were 
seldom seen, and where only a few spore 
plants had yet appeared. 

His first intimation that all was not 
well vvas a haunting feeling of unease, 
which came upon him quite suddenly 
one day just before noon. His body 
burned and prickled uncomfortably, and 
he felt restless. Other than these dim 
evidences, there was nothing to betray 
the invisible hand of death. 

Emanations, originating in the gener- 
ators of the Itorloo, far underground. 
But Kaw was no physicist. He knew 
only that he and his fellows were vaguely 
disturbed. 



With Teka, his mate, and several of 
their companions, he soared high into 
the sky. There, for a time, he f'lt bet- 
ter. Far overhead, near the Sun’s bright 
disc, he glimpsed the incandescent 
streamers of Itorloo vessels, distant in 
space. And presently, with little atten- 
tion, he saw those vessels — there were 
five in the group — turn back toward 
Earth, 

The advance in the strength of the 
deadly emanations was slow. Vast 
masses of rock, covering the upper crust 
of the planet in a thin shell, had to de- 
velop a kind of resonance to them before 
they could reach their maximum power. 

By nightfall Kaw felt only slightly 
more uncomfortable. By the following 
dawn, however, he was definitely droopy 
and listless. The gradual, world-wide 
process of purification advanced, di- 
rected at the invaders, but promising de- 
struction to the less favored native life 
of Earth, too. 

Four days. Huddled in a pathetic 
group in a ruined structure of antiquity, 
Kaw’s tribe waited. Their features were 
dull and ruffled, and they shivered as if 
with cold. Some of them uttered low, 
sleepy twitterings of anguish. 

That evening Kaw watched the pale 
Moon rise from a battered window em- 
brasure. He was too weak to stand, but 
rested slumped forward on his breast. 
His eyes were rheumy and heavy-lidded, 
but they still held a savage glitter of 
defiance, which perhaps would burn in 
them even after they had ceased to live 
and see. And Kaw’s clouded mind could 
still hazard a guess as to the identity of 
the author of his woes. Brave but im- 
potent, he could still scream a hoarse 
challenge Inspired by a courage as death- 
less as the ages. 

“Itorloo ! Itorloo ! ” 

SOME TIME before the first group 
of spaceships, headed for Venus, had 
been recalled to Earth, Zar, assigned to 
the second group, which had not yet 



SEEDS OF THE DUSK 



95 



entered the launching tubes, had col- 
lapsed against his instrument panels. 

His affliction had come with a sudden- 
ness that was utterly abrupt. Recover- 
ing from his swoon, he found himself 
lying on a narrow pallet in the hospital 
quarters of the city. His vision was 
swimming and fogged, and he felt hot 
and cold by turns. 

But he could see the silvery tuniced 
figure of the physician standing close to 
him. 

“What is wrong?” he stammered. 
“What is it that has happened to me? 
A short time ago I was well!” 

“Much is wrong,” the physician re- 
turned quietly. “And you have not 
really been well for a long time. A germ 
disease — a type of thing which we 
thought our sanitation had stamped out 
milleniums ago — has been ravaging 
your brain and nerves for months ! Only 
its insidiousness prevented it from be- 
ing discovered earlier. During its in- 
cipient stages the poisons of it seem 
actually to stimulate mental and physi- 
cal activity, giving a treacherous impres- 
sion of robust health. And we know, 
certainly, that this disease is extremely 
contagious. It does not reveal itself 
easily, but I and others have examined 
many apparently healthy individuals 
with great care. In each there is the 
telltale evidence that the disease is not 
only present, but far advanced. Hun- 
dreds have collapsed as you have. More, 
surely will follow. It is my belief that 
the entire race has been afflicted. And 
the plague has a fatal look. Panic has 
broken out. There is a threatened fail- 
ure of power and food supplies. Per- 
haps an antitoxin can be found — but 
there is so little time.” 

Half delirious, Zar still could grasp 
the meaning of the physician’s words, 
and could understand the origin of the 
disease. 

He began to mutter with seeming in- 
coherence : “The changing Earth. 



Reptiles. Mammals. Men Suc- 
cession. Nature ” 

His voice took on a fiercer tone. 
“Fight, Itorloo I” he screamed. “Fight !” 

Cruel, he was, as were all his peo- 
ple, but he had pluck. Suddenly he 
arose to a sitting posture on his bed. 
His eyes flamed. If his act represented 
the final dramatic gesture of all the 
hoary race of man, still it was magnifi- 
cent. Nor were any tears to be shed, 
for extinction meant only a task com- 
pleted. 

“Fight!” he shouted again, as if ad- 
dressing a limitless multitude. “Fight, 
Itorloo ! Study ! Learn ! Work ! It 
is the only hope! "Keep power flowing 
in the purification generators if you can. 
The old records of the explorations of 
Mars — those plants! Their approach 
to problems is different from our own. 
No metals. No machines as we know 
them. But in hidden compartments in 
their tissues it was easy for them to cre- 
ate the bacteria of death! They in- 
vented those bacteria, and grew them, 
breaking them away from their own sub- 
stance. Some way, when I was a cap- 
tive, I was infected. The thorns on the 
tendrils that held me ! I was the car- 
rier! Find an antitoxin to fight the 
plague, Itorloo! Work ” 

VI. 

ONE YEAR. Two. Three. The 
sunshine was brilliant, the air almost 
warm. The rusty desert hills in the dis- 
tance were the same. Ancient ruins 
brooded in the stillness, as they had for 
so long. On the slopes ant hordes were 
busy. Rodent colonies showed similar 
evidence of population. In the sky, Kaw 
and his companions wheeled and turned 
lazily. 

This was the same Earth, with sev- 
eral changes. Bulbous, spiny things 
peopled the gorges, and were probing 
out across the desert, slowly building — 
with hollow, connecting roots — the wa- 



96 



ASTOUNDING SCIENCE-FICTION 



ter pipes of a tremendous irrigation sys- 
tem. Like that of Mars, and like that 
of Ganymede, moon of Jupiter, in for- 
mer ages. Saline remnants of seas and 
polar snow's could alike provide the 
needed moisture. 

Thoughts traveled swiftly along con- 
necting roots. Little orbs and wicked 
spines gleamed. The invaders were at 
peace now. Only the Itorloo could have 
threatened their massed might. There 
was no danger in the lesser native life. 

The subterranean cities of the former 
rulers of Earth were inhabited only by 
corpses and by intruding ants, who, like 
the other fauna of this planet, were im- 
mune to the plague, which had been di- 
rected and designed for the Itorloo alone. 
The last race of men was now one with 
the reptiles of the Mesozoic. But all 
was peace. 



Kaw screamed out his contentment iit 
loud, lazy cries, as he circled in the clear 
air. He seldom thought of the past 
any more. If the new masters were not 
truly benignant, they were indifferent. 
They left him alone. Kaw, creature of 
Earth’s dusk, was happy. 

The great surface dome where Zar, 
the Itorloo, had once kept watch, was 
already surrounded by crowded growths. 
The plants had achieved a great, but an 
empty, victory. For Earth was a dying 
planet. Within the dome an astronom- 
ical telescope gleamed dully, collecting 
dust. Often Zar had directed it toward 
Venus, goal of shattered Itorloo dreams. 

But who knew? Out of the void to 
Ganymede the invaders had come. 
Across space to Mars. Riding light to 
Earth. Perhaps when the time came — • 
when Venus was gi'owing old 



MONSTROUS TWIN 

SULPHUR and selenium are twin elements, closely similar — to the inorganic 
chemist. But to the organic chemist, the biochemist, the resemblance practi- 
cally ceases. Selenium is poisonous, horribly poisonous in a genuinely loathe- 
some manner. There is sulphur in eggs, of course. That sulphur is there because, 
for some yet-unknovyn reason, sulphur is vital to growth processes. Evil-smelling 
thio-gycerine (gljxerine containing a sulphur atom in place of one or more of the 
usual o.xygen atoms in the molecule) is used on burn-dressings because the sulphur 
somehow, mysteriously, promotes the growth of new tissue and swift healing. 
Hair contains a large proportion of a sulphur-containing protein material. 

IN certain regions of the West, the ground is poor in sulphur. Plants growing 
there, unable to get the "badly-needed sulphur, take the near-twin element, selenium, 
instead. 

THEN the deadliness of the element begins. Cattle and horses, chickens and 
similar animals eat those plants. Their growing cells require sulphur, and the 
selenium slips in instead. Hair-cells, trying to manufacture that sulphur-containing 
protein, first find that the substitute won’t work. The hair-cells are poisoned, die, 
and ulcerous sores appear. The hair drops out in ugly patches. Sores, cuts, bruises 
fail to heal, as the growth-stimulating functions of the tissues fail for lack of 
sulphur. The wounds spread and fester. The animal’s brain is affected. 

BUT selenium-fed hens laying eggs somehow manage to get the selenium into the 
proteins that should contain sulphur. And it works — somewhat. The things that 
hatch out live, for a while at least. But they aren’t chickens. They are monstrous 
things. Growth of young, new cells — where sulphur is most vitally needed — goes 
on somehow — but it goes zvrong. Calves and colts born to cattle and horses fed 
on that poisoned fodder are monstrous, the degree of wrongness increasing with 
the proportion of selenium the mother animal ate. 



97 




A golden cloud 
of them swarmed 
up from the tiny 
buildings, fac- 
tories and mines. 



by Norman L. Knight 



The empire that did not want to be known 



M cGrath came aboard the ship 
at Port Said, in the middle of 
an afternoon of withering heat. 
Two swarthy, white-turbaned men car- 
ried him up the gangplank and into his 
AST— 7 



cabin; his legs dangled inertly as if 
paralyzed. They passed within a few 
feet of my deck-chair, where I lay bak- 
ing and sweltering in the shade of an 
awning. McGrath's appearance shocked 



98 



ASTOUNDING SCIENCE-FICTION 



me out of a semi-stupor and into a state 
of observant wakefulness. 

He seemed a youngish man, and yet 
he was extraordinarily emaciated. His 
hands were bony talons resting on the 
shoulders of the two porters. His 
clothes hung and flapped loosely upon 
him. Half of one ear was missing, and 
the tip of his nose had been sliced off 
obliquely. The scars were dark red, and 
obviously recent. His face was the 
thinly masked face of a skull, the eyes 
retracted into cavernous sockets and 
haunted by the shadow of some abysmal 
fear. 

I <lid not see him again until several 
days later, after we had passed Gibral- 
tar and were well out upon the Atlantic. 
(The ship was a freighter, the Eastern 
Dart, carrying passengers incidentally, 
and had put in at both Palermo and Al- 
giers after leaving Port Said.) It was 
one of those days when the sea is an 
incredible blue, flecked with restless 
streaks of luminous white, and the ship 
rolled but slightly. McGrath appeared 
on deck hobbling on crutches, and a 
steward assisted him to the deck-chair 
next to mine. Seen thus closely, his 
features were scarred by a number of 
small pits, like miniature pock-marks. 
His eyes were bloodshot. He answered 
my greeting absently, then became ab- 
sorbed in silent brooding. And it was a 
plutosophical idea he tried to present. 

When at last he spoke he was some- 
what incoherent. 

“A really new idea is a fearful thing 
to most people,” he remarked abruptly. 
“Their minds resist it — go on the de- 
fensive — instinctively. The idea of a 
round earth — and still worse, a moving 
earth — seemed a wanton insult to the 
human intelligence. And organic evolu- 
tion — well, many a mind is outraged 
even now, at the bare thought of it. We 
absorb new knowledge slowly. Perhaps 
it is just as well. If our knowledge in- 
creased at unlimited speed, if we ac- 
cepted new facts immediately, could we 



endure it? If, by some miracle, a hu- 
man mind could suddenly see and com- 
prehend everything— the whole world — 
all the hidden things, all the inhumanly 
strange things Might it not disin- 

tegrate like — like the burning-out of a 
fuse in an overloaded circuit?” 

He paused and seemed embarrassed. 
He smiled and shook his head. 

“I’m not really unbalanced,” he as- 
sured me apologetically, “although some- 
times I may talk as if I were. But I 
have had a disturbing experience, a pro- 
foundly disturbing experience. If only 
I could tell someone about it without 
feeling that I might raise doubts as to 

my sanity Sometimes I doubt it 

myself.” 

Since it was evident that he was har- 
assed by some queer, emotional stress 
and felt that he could unburden him- 
self by talking, I encouraged McGrath 
to continue. It was at this time that I 
learned his name — Finley McGrath — 
and thereupon recalled that it was a 
name which appeared periodically on 
the picture-pages of newspapers. He 
was always returning from some remote 
portion of the globe with a trunkful of 
photographs and motion-picture films. 
He explained that he had a large— and, 
he felt, undeserved — income. He was 
unmarried, had no close relatives, and 
so indulged a passion for exploration. 

HE BEGAN his career as a mere 
aimless traveler, but soon found himself 
more and more intrigued by the seem- 
ingly infinite variety of human types 
which he encountered than by the stereo- 
typed “points of interest” for tourists. 
The more primitive races particvdarly 
excited his curiosity. Inadvertently, so 
to speak, he became an amateur an- 
thropologist. From an interest in primi- 
tive races he passed to an interest in 
prehistoric man and the controversy re- 
garding the place of the origin of the 
human race. Was Asia or Africa the 
"cradle of humanity”? Or had two 



ISLE OF THE GOLDEN SWARM 



99 



kinds of humanity appeared in each, at 
different times? 

McGrath decided to take Africa as 
the field of his researches, and made at 
least one noteworthy contribution to the 
prehistory of man on the Dark Conti- 
nent. Probably the reader will recall 
the flurry of popular excitement in 1946, 
following McGrath’s discovery of the 
almost complete fossil skeleton of an im- 
mature male creature now known to sci- 
ence as Uganda Man, Australopithecus 
ugandensis, but hailed for a few brief 
days of notoriety by press and radio as . 
“the African Gorilla Boy’’. 

In the course of his African explora- 
tions which culminated in the discov- 
ery of Uganda Man, McGrath became 
intimately acquainted with several com- 
munities of those curious little folk, the 
pygmies, who are indispensable as 
guides in certain regions. Moreover, 
his movements frequently took him 
through the gorilla country and he was 
seized with a desire to know more of 
these huge, manlike forest dwellers. He 
was quite free to change the subject of 
his investigations, since the latter were 
conceived and financed entirely by him- 
self. The net result of these circum- 
stances was that McGrath undertook to 
study the gorilla at close range in its 
natural habitat. 

“At first, I tried to find out all that 
was known about gorillas,’’ said Mc- 
Grath. “I read all the books I could 
get. corresponded with various people, 
interviewed others. And I was 
astounded when I found that the go- 
rilla is, as it were, an unknown animal. 
I mean that next to nothing is known 
atxnit it. Oh, we know its anatomy, of 
course, and' something of the behavior 
of young individuals in solitary captiv- 
ity. And a few people have taken un- 
satisfactory movies of gorillas, or have 
watched them with binoculars for a few 
hours, in their native forests. They are 
vegetarians, and go about in troops, 
usually small — a big male, his harem, 



and their young. They make beds of 
leaves on the ground at night, less often 
in trees. They are scarcely any more 
arboreal than man. And their ferocity 
is largely a myth. They are aggressive 
when annoyed, or when the old male 
becomes alarmed for the safety of his 
family. That roughly sums up the in- 
formation I could gather. 

“I felt baffled ; I couldn’t believe it at 
first. It had seemed to me that such a 
near-human creature — a being whose be- 
havior might shed light on the prehis- 
toric childhood of our race — would have 
been the object of the most intensive 
study as soon as it was realized that 
man is really a sort of sublimated ape.’’ 

“And did you’ devise some way of 
observing gorillas, more effective than 
previous methods ?’’ I inquired. 

‘Tt’s perfectly obvious how it should 
be done,” replied McGrath in a faintly 
surprised tone, as if a description of his 
method should have been unnecessary. 
“How does one study a primitive hu- 
man race? One goes among them and 
lives with them until they are accus- 
tomed to one’s presence. Then they will 
behave naturally even when one is with 
them and watching them. I applied the 
same technique to gorillas.” 

“You mean that you camped some- 
where in a gorilla forest and then waited 
to see what the gorillas would do?” 

“I didn’t wait passively; I did things 
to attract and interest them. And T had 
a sort of camp, but it wasn’t a tent. I 
was afraid that a tent or hut would look 
strange, and make the apes unduly sus- 
picious. So I lived in a cave which I 
fixed up, alone, for six months.” 

“Hold on!” I exclaimed. “You were 
alone f Why alone? Wasn’t that tak- 
ing a big risk?” 

“I felt that the fewer people there 
were about, the better were my chances 
of success,” McGrath informed me 
calmly. “Besides, I didn’t know of any- 
one on whom I could depend to behave 
in accordance with my plans. I didn’t 



100 



ASTOUNDING SCIENCE-FICTION 



want to risk having a jittery partner 
who might fire a gun, or fly off the han- 
dle in some other way, and so destroy 
the carefully cultivated confidence of the 
gorillas after months of effort. And it 
reduced the list of necessary supplies. 
It was a risk, of course. When I got 
my permit to enter the gorilla country, 
from the Belgian government, I didn’t 
tell them my plans in full. The permit 
might have been refused. The Belgians 
endeavor to restrain amateur explorers 
from rash enterprises, as well as to pro- 
tect the gorillas from unscrupulous hunt- 
ers. If I had broken a leg, or had come 
down with an attack of appendicitis dur- 
ing those six months, I would have been 
in a bad way. As it was, I barely got 
out alive.” 

‘‘Then some unforeseen mishap did 
occur !” 

‘‘Unforeseen mishap! Lord, yes!” 
“Did an evil-tempered gorilla catch 
you unawares?” 

“THE THING which happened to 
me was not due to the malice of a go- 
rilla nor to any human agency,” de- 
clared McGrath, with a queer look. “I 
was harmed by neither fish, flesh, nor 
fowl. And I have yet to encounter an 
evil-tempered gorilla — although I am 
told by reliable authorities that solitary 
outcast ‘rogues’ do exist. As a matter 
of fact, I owe my life to a gorilla.” 
“No! How was that?” 

“He carried me bodily out of a very 
bad predicament after the — the accident 
happened. I called him Gunga Din, 
even before then. But I’ll come to that 
shortly. Where was I ?” 

“You said that you fixed up some 
sort of cave dwelling, alone.” 

“I said that I stayed there alone for 
six months — alone, that is, so far as hu- 
man companionship was concerned. But 
Kwanga and his ‘boys’ helped me to find 
the cave and carried in my supplies — 
one himdred odd miles through incredi- 



bly rough country— on their heads, and 
helped me to get settled in the cave. 
Kwanga is a Batwa, a pygmy of the 
Batwa tribe, and a swell fellow. I owe 
a lot to Kwanga. A chance remark of 
his led me to the discovery of Uganda 
Man. 

“It took almost a month to traverse 
the slightly more than one hundred miles 
from Kwanga’s village to my cave. The 
pygmies could have made it much 
sooner, but I delayed them. I have 
traveled afoot over some rough terrain 
at various times, but this trip was in a 
class by itself. The whole country has 
been shattered by an ancient upheaval 
and is densely overgrown — with sub- 
tropical and temperate types of forest, 
because of the great altitude. We aver- 
aged about four miles per day, meas- 
ured on the level. But that doesn’t in- 
clude the ups and. downs. Sometimes 
we went up eight hundred or a thousand 
feet and then down again, three or four 
times during the day’s journey. And 
there were thickets of giant grass — like 
cornstalks — woven together in a three- 
dimensional mat, full of monkey- tunnels. 
Patches of giant nettles that even the 
elephants went around. 

“The Batwa scrambled over and 
around all these obstacles, up hill and 
down dale, chattering and making a lark 
of the whole thing. They adopted an 
indulgent, paternal attitude toward me, 
as if I were a child attempting a too- 
difficult task. The end of each day 
found me more and more exhausted. 
Finally Kwanga discovered the cave one 
afternoon. It looked like a good spot, 
and we had been seeing or hearing go- 
rillas frequently, so we stopped there. 

“Kwanga’s ‘boys’ walled up the cave- 
mouth for me, leaving a waist-high en- 
trance which could be closed from the 
inside by rolling a boulder in front of 
it. I instructed Kwanga to return in 
six months — after the next rains — with 
certain supplies, and then they left me. 

“But before he departed Kwanga said 



ISLE OF THE GOLDEN SWARM 



101 



a curious thing. Tf the Picture-Box 
Master is wise' — that was their name 
for me, inspired by my camera — ‘If the 
Picture-Box Master is wise,’ Kwanga 




said, ‘he will not go far beyond this 
plac'e. Beyond here the forest is not 
good to he in. There are little demons 
flying in the air. Men who go there do 
not come back. Kwanga tells you a 
very big truth.’ 

“One wouldn’t accept such warning 
literally, of course. I told Kwanga that 
I would remember what he had said, 
but secretly I believed that the remoter 
forest was inhabited by some species of 
bat or bird of grotesque form or color- 
ing, possibly nocturnal, and perhaps pos- 
sessed of a voice that was unusually 
loud or in some way uncanny. The 
men who didn’t come back, I thought, 
simply were victims of ordinary acci- 
dents such as might easily befall them 
in that kind of country.’’ 

A near-by cabin door was opened at 
this point by one of the ship’s passen- 
gers. There was a radio in the cabin 
and it had been left turned on. It was 
emitting a loud droning buzz, which 
stopped with a click. Then the door 
closed. McGrath’s face turned a sickly 



3^ellow and he clutched the arms of his 
deck chair. 

“Mj' self-control is all shot.’’ he re- 
marked shakily. “A sound like that — 
startles me more than you can imagine.’’ 

He was silent for a few minutes and 
his features gradually regained their 
normal hue. 

“It may seem strange to you.’’ he 
continued, “but after the Batwa left me 
I felt myself enveloped by a vast peace 
and serenity. I was in the heart of a 
forest that seemed as old as time. The 
very air smelled ancient. And yet there 
was nothing oppressive in that atmos- 
phere of immense antiquity. The giant 
trees seemed to exhale an all-pervading, 
soothing silence — a shadowy, mossy, 
fern-draped stillness. The sounds of 
birds and insects, the distant guttural 
bark of gorillas, merely accentuated the 
stillness.’’ 

McGrath now embarked on a de- 
scription of how he aroused the interest 
of his gorilla neighbors, gradually won 
their confidence, even succeeded in la>'- 
ing hands on them with impunity. A 
grizzled patriarch minus one eye was 
the first to be won over, finally suc- 
cumbing to the attraction of salted pea- 
nuts. It was a sufficiently astounding 
story in itself, but the details are not 
relevant to this narrative. He came at 
last to the case of the young male an- 
thropoid whom he eventually christened 
Gunga Din. 

“The same day that I moved the salt- 
lick to within twenty paces of the cave 
and old One-Eye snatched my break- 
fast.’’ McGrath went on, “I noticed a 
band of four young bucks spying on me 
from the thicket of wild celery. Gunga 
Din was one of these four. They were 
mature youngsters who had been forci- 
bly ejected from their respective families 
by the jealous Old Man gorillas, when 
they became unduly attentive to mem- 
bers of the harem. They had not yet 



102 



ASTOUNDING SCIENCE-FICTION 



found mates, and so had drifted together 
into a fraternity of forlorn bachelorhood. 
I got out the tom-tom and gave them 
the rhythm test. 

“Gunga Din reacted emphatically. 
He set up an answering rhythm of 
coughs, ‘Waugh! Waugh! Waugh!’ 
For some reason, this angered the other 
three and they all cuffed him unmerci- 
fully. Gunga Din did not retaliate, but 



fled, bellowing angrily. Subsequent 
happenings amply proved tliat he was 
no coward ; he merely disliked to quarrel. 

“In fact, Gunga Din was a somewhat 
superior gorilla, and an emotional mis- 
fit in his community. He returned day 
after day to the salt-lick, and gradually 
came nearer and nearer to enjoy my 
tom-tom serenades. The other three 
bachelors disappeared to be seen no 




“Whenever I tried to get into that part of the forest, Gunga Din 
stopped me — and there was no arguing with that arm of his." 



ISLE OF THE GOLDEN SWARM 



103 



more. At length Gunga Din would per- 
mit me to scratch his back with a stiff 
brush. Then he began making his nest 
of leaves at my cave door every eve- 
ning. He came into the cave once, but 
frightened himself by upsetting a pile 
of aluminum utensils and would not en- 
ter again. 

“I gave him a tambourine and he 
wrecked it in half an hour. Then J gave 
him a cow-bell attached to a loop of 
light rope for carrying, and he took it 
everywhere. No matter where Gunga 
Din wandered in the adjacent forest, I 
could tell approximately where he was 
by the clanking of his bell. 

“He developed an infected tick-bite 
on his arm, which I treated and cured, 
and he became even more a doglike 
companion — and protector — than he had 
beep before. 

“Frequently we went places together. 
The gorillas had made tunnellike trails 
through the undergrowth, and I ex- 
plored miles of them, accompanied by 
Gunga Din. I carried a gun, but I had 
resolved never to use it except in the 
last extremity of danger, and did not fire 
it once during the entire period of six 
months I was there. 

“And I discovered an odd fact. When 
I followed the tunnel-trails in the di- 
rection of Kwanga’s ‘haunted forest’, 
they invariably came to a dead end or 
turned aside. This gave me to think, 
as the French say. And if I endeavored 
to press on into this apparently taboo 
region, Gunga Din would clamp an 
enormous black paw around my arm 
and toss me back along the trail in the 
way he knew I should go. At such 
times I felt that my experiment was 
proving a bit too successful. There was 
no arguing with that arm of his. 

“Then a solitary young female began 
to haunt the vicinity of my cave, and 
Gunga Din discovered a new interest in 
life. (It seems that the Old Man’s 
daughters run away when they become 
mature, but they don’t band together 



like the young bachelors. There’s a 
point for our psychologists to reflect 
upon.) She and Gunga Din went 
through an elaborate performance of in- 
difference. They would roam the neigh- 
boring forest for hours, always within 
sight of each other, but studiously ig- 
noring each other. 

“THIS GAVE ME the opportunity 
for which I had been waiting. One fine 
morning when Gunga Din’s cow-bell 
was. almost inaudible in the other direc- 
tion, I set out toward the verbotcn part 
of the forest. I penetrated about a mile 
beyond a dead-end trail and came out 
into a zone nearly free of underbrush. 
The ground was thick with golden- 
brown moss, and graybeard pennants 
hung from huge trees with massive 
trunks of pallid gray. And the silence 
was not the silence which surrounded 
my cave. It was not simply the eternal 
background for the familiar, pleasing 
forest sounds. It was a tense, uncanny 
silence. Not a bird, not an insect. 

“Then I saw the pygmy’s skeleton, 
partly embedded in the moss and stained 
green with algae. It was in excellent 
condition. None of the bones were 
crushed, chipped, or broken. They had 
simply fallen apart at the articulations. 
A smooth, round hole had been drilled 
through the temple of the skull — other- 
wise it was intact. I looked for a bul- 
let in the brain cavity, but there was 
none to find. . 

“As I stood pondering over this, I 
heard the clanking approach of Gunga’s 
bell. It jangled as if it were moving in 
great leaps. I laughed between amuse- 
ment and vexation, suddenly realizing 
the extent to which our relations had 
altered. Gunga Din had remembered 
his problem child and was coming to 
see what I was doing. He was assum- 
ing the role of protector and disciplina- 
rian; I was his wayward protege, per- 
versely attempting to do the forbidden 
at the first opportunity. 



104 



ASTOUNDING SCIENCE-FICTION 



“Gunga Din appeared bounding to- 
ward me over the mossy turf among the 
farther trees. As he drew near I was 
alarmed, thinking that he meant to do 
me violence. His eyes were popping 
out of their sockets and his teeth were 
bared. I know now that he was hor- 
ribly frightened. The next moment he 
had tucked me under his arm like a 
bundle of old clothes and was loping 
back whence he came. He did not put 
me down or cease running until we 
were in front of my cave. Then he 
dropped me, and I had no sooner 
scrambled, spluttering, to my feet than 
he administered a tremendous cuff over 
the side of my head with the palm of 
his hand. I presume that it was in- 
tended only as a gentle admonition, but 
to me — poor human weakling — it was 
like being clouted with a blackjack. I 
went down for the count. When I re- 
gained consciousness he was rolling 
about on the ground, wailing dolefully, 
evidently laboring under the not-very- 
false impression that I was dead. 

“It was after this episode that I be- 
gan calling him Gunga Din. 

“A little later he deserted me. He and 
the young female had reached a stage 
where they no longer ignored each other, 
but behaved as if each were merely tol- 
erating the other. Certain incidents 
which I happened to see revealed that 
the lady objected to Gunga Din’s cow- 
bell. He had to make up his mind to 
renounce either one or the other of them. 
He must have undergone a painful in- 
ternal struggle for a time. Then one 
morning when I crawled out of my 
cave, there was no Gunga Din. But 
lying in his nest of leaves was the cow- 
bell, polished smooth and black by much 
handling, attached to the frayed loop of 
rope. I hung it on a rocky projection 
by the cave. I felt certain then that 
Gunga Din probably would not return 
until after many days, if at all. 

“To my chagrin, the rains chose to 
begin at this time, so my plans for in- 



vestigating the haunted forest were nec- 
essarily postponed. Every valley re- 
sounded with the turbulent seething of 
impassable streams. 

“BUT ALL THINGS must cease, 
even the rains. Came a day when I set 
out through a rejuvenated forest, bril- 
liant with new greenery and a riotous 
profusion of flowers. My enterprise 
quickly ran into difficulties. The open 
forest, where I had found the pygmy’s 
skeleton, soon came to an end. I spent 
a week hacking a path through a tangle 
of shrubs and creepers, returning to the 
task each day. I had to go through — 
I could find no way around. I stum- 
bled on two more skeletons in this tan- 
gle, one of a leopard, the other of a 
half-grown gorilla. They were old 
bones, with shrubs growing up among 
them. In both cases the skulls had a 
single perforation through the temple. 
There were spiral marks around the in- 
side of these holes, as if something had 
drilled through with a whirling mo- 
tion. 

“I spent more days looking for a way 
around or through a patch of giant net- 
tles which must have extended over sev- 
eral square miles. Beyond this was 
open, moss-carpeted forest again. And 
over it all hung a menacing silence; 
there was no sound save the occasional 
rush of the wind in the leaves. 

“Having blazed a trail thus far, I set 
out from my cave early one morning 
with two days’ provisions, my gun, bin- 
oculars, and a miniature movie camera. 
It required only about six hours to fol- 
low my marked trail to the place where 
there was an open lane through the net- 
tle patch. From there on, the going 
was easy. The terrain was nearly level 
and I trod on soft moss through the for- 
est shade. 

“I encountered skeletons with omi- 
nous frequency. The farther I went, 
the more thqre were. In one place were 
the skeletons of three buffalo; in an- 



ISLE OF THE GOLDEN SWARM 



105 



otlier, the bony remains of an indefinite 
nnniber of l)aboons were strewn over a 
large area. And in every case the skulls 
were perforated by a single hole in the 
temple, hut there were no bullets in 
them. I tried not to think of Kwanga’s 
warning, and told myself that perhaps 
after all there might be some truth in 
the tale — which I had rejected as myth- 
ical — that wild beasts have ‘graveyards’ 
where they go to die. 

“Late in the afternoon I heard a 
sound — a steady drone like the motor 
of an airplane. And it came from above. 
I ran this way and that, looking up- 
ward, hut the roof of foliage was im- 
penetrable. The droning grew, passed 
b)% and faded in the distance. I de- 
cided that it might have been a Belgian 
plane making a photographic survey.” 

McGrath paused and appeared to 
brace himself as for an ordeal. 

“About a mile farther along, I came 
to the lake, approaching it down a gen- 
tle slope through a veritable valley of 
bones. The shores of the lake were lit- 
tered with them. Rising from among 
them I saw the great white dome and 
curving tusks of an elephant’s skull. 

“In the center of the lake was a 
wooded islet. A grayish mass of curi- 
ously pitted rock rose from the midst 
of the trees, and it gleamed and spar- 
kled under the declining sun as if from 
the outcroppings of bright metallic min- 
erals. Wisps of smoke or steam rose at 
several points along the rocky shores of 
the islet, which I took to indicate the 
presence of hot springs or volcanic 
vents. I filmed the islet and the shores 
of the lake — then turned my binoculars 
upon the former. 

“Tlie object which I had thought to 
he a mass of pitted rock was an arti- 
ficial structure. It was full of little 
window-openings, and had metal fittings 
and ornaments. The wisps of smoke — 
well, you won’t believe me.” 

“Go on,” I urged. 



“ALONG the shores of the islet were 
several groups of buildings of toylike 
proportions. I could gauge their small- 
ness by the relative size of the trees. 
Their architecture was — like nothing 
else on Earth. But they were enough 
like similar structures of human origin 
for me to divine their purposes. They 
were miniature mines and foundries, 
running full blast.” 

“Why do you say ‘of human origin’ ?” 
I demanded. “Weren’t these things of 
human origin? I was expecting you to 
say that you had discovered a community 
of civilized pygmies.” 

“You don’t understand,” replied Mc- 
Grath. “These structures were much 
too small for that. They were like doll 
houses. The inhabitants — were not hu- 
man !” 

“Not human!” was all that I could 
exclaim, then stared speechlessly at 
McGrath. 

“You think I’m mad!” he cried, wip- 
ing the perspiration from his forehead 
with a shaking, bony hand. “But I’m 
telling you the gospel truth, so help me ! 
While I gazed through my binoculars 
in amazement, a sparkling swarm of 
creatures issued from the structure in 
the center of the islet. My first thought 
wa^ that they were small birds wdth 
metallic golden plumage. Then they 
formed themselves into ranks and 
squadrons in the air and arrowed to- 
ward me. They came with a sinister 
zooming rush — like the sound of a dis- 
tant airplane. 

“One lens of my binoculars clicked 
and cracked as some small missile struck 
it, and my face and arms felt as if they 
had been pricked by a score of red-hot 
needles. Hurriedly dropping the glasses, 
I saw a number of little steel darts, like 
phonograph needles, sticking in my 
arms. I plucked them out, and some 
others that were embedded in my face. 
But already a fiery sensation of burn- 
ing and prickling was radiating with 



106 



ASTOUNDING SCIENCE-FICTION 



terrible swiftness from each puncture. 
It suffused me from head to foot. Then 
came a numbness and dizziness. My 
legs folded under me, and I rolled among 
the clattering bones. I endeavored to 
rise and found to my horror that I 




could not stir so much as a finger. Only 
my involuntary muscles — heart, dia- 
phragm, eyelids — continued to function. 

'T had fallen with my face toward the 
lake. Unable to move, unable to cry 
out, I watched the golden swarm from 
the islet swooping down upon me. The 
creatures descended in disciplined for- 
mation, alighted upon me and around 
me. 

“They were insects! They were gi- 
ant hornets, the size of humming birds, 
and their bodies and limbs seemed 
wrought of burnished gold. They 
walked upon their two hinder pairs of 
limbs, but held the fore part of their 
bodies upright, in the manner of a pray- 
ing mantis, and were very dexterous 
with their third and forward pair of 
limbs. The first squadron to arrive was 
armed with little crossbows of silvery 
metal. 

“The next contingent carried an arma- 
ment of straight, curved, and hook- 
pointed blades. They did not run about 
in the nervous, aimless fashion of ordi- 
nary wasps, but moved with orderly, 
purposeful swiftness. A half-dozen of 
them trotted over me in an exploratory 
fashion, seemed to confer, then ampu- 
tated a bit of my nose. The operation 



was painless; the venom of their darts 
must have been an efficient local anes- 
thetic as well. They immediately ap- 
plied a styptic paste to the wound. 
Then they retired with the fragment to 
a point just on the edge of my range of 
vision, w’here I could not see exactly 
what they were doing. But my impres- 
sion was that they — devoured it! 

“The blade-bearers then swarmed 
over me and commenced cutting away 
my boots and clothing in small hits. 
They had triangular faces and bulging, 
red-gold eyes. Horrible half-formed 
thoughts darted through my mind. I 
thought of the wasps who paralyze spi- 
ders with their stings and entomb them 
with the eggs, to be eaten, living but 
immobile, by their larval young. But 
the skeletons I had seen had been 
stripped, apparently, where they lay. 
And every skull had a hole drilled 
through the temple! I thought of a 
trip I had once made through a great 
abattoir in Chicago. I felt my sanity 
slipping.” 

“But you say that you saw the re- 
mains of elephants, and of buffalo,” I 
objected. “How could steel darts the 
size of phonograph needles, shot from 
tiny crossbows, penetrate the hides of 
such animals?” 

“THEY HAD other weapons,” said 
McGrath grimly. “They had their 
heavy artillery as well. While my cloth- 
ing was being removed piecemeal, a sort 
of ship put out from the islet. It was 
rather like a small-scale working model 
of a modern battleship, about fifteen feet 
in length. It cleft the water with a 
smooth purring, and there was no sign 
of smoke or steam. It came about close 
to shore, and the crew let down a gang- 
plank. A number of little machines 
then came ashore, traveling on caterpil- 
lar treads and whirring like mechanical 
toys. One of them was certainly a drill- 
ing machine — the diamond-bright drill 
was very prominent — and one of them 



ISLE OF THE GOLDEN SWARM 



107 



was probably a kind of pump. The 
others were mysteries. 

“And on the deck of the ship was 
ranged the heavy artillery I spoke of. 
There were batteries of steel catapults 
on mobile mounts. I could see the slen- 
der needle-pointed projectiles lying in 
their grooves.” 

“I might believe your story, except 
for one circumstance,” I observed. 
“Frankly, I think that you are a writer 
of bizarre fiction and are merely testing 
your latest inspiration on me to get my 
reaction. If such a race of highly intel- 
ligent creatures really exists, why should 
they remain hidden in their fastness, 
unknown to the world? Would they 
not emerge to explore and observe? 
Would they have no dreams of conquest 
and expansion ?” 

McGrath fixed an austere, bloodshot 
eye upon me. F thought of the Ancient 
Mariner. 

“Why did Europe have to wait until 
after 1492 to colonize the New World 
effectively?” he demanded. “It was a 
possibility long before that, as the Vik- 
ings demonstrated. The obstacles were 
mental and emotional, not physical. But 
I think that the real answer to your 
question is this: The people of the 

Golden Swarm are wiser than men; 
they do not dream of conquest. And 
how do we know that they have not fre- 
quently emerged to explore and observe, 
as you say? Being the intelligent crea- 
tures that they are, would they not carry 
on their expeditions into the outside 
world very discreetly ? Would they not 
quickly realize that our race is over- 
whelmingly more numerous and power- 
ful than theirs? Would they not con- 
sider it highly desirable to remain un- 
known, and approach our large centers 
of population with great caution? Even 
if a number of them did fly over a large 
city at an altitude of five hundred feet, 
let us say, who would notice them? 
They are smaller than sparrows. Like 
certain ‘rare species’ of moths which 



are suspected of being much more plenti- 
ful than they seem to be, the members 
of the Golden Swarm may be adepts at 
keeping out of sight. If a score of them 
alighted on the summit of Eiffel Tower, 
who would observe them? 

“And if someone did, and reported it, 
who would believe him? Imagine what 
the reaction of the public would be to a 
headline like this: ‘Window Washer 

Sees Wonder Wasps Roosting on Radio 
City’. Or, ‘Monster Insects Panic 
Penthouse Party’. MHiat would be your 
comment? I repeat: For the promo- 
tion of our peace of mind and continued 
sanity, we absorb new knowledge very 
slowly.” 

“You put up a plausible defense for 
a fantastic thesis,” I admitted. “At any 
rate, go on.” 

“When my captors had reduced my 
clothing to a mass of tatters,” McGrath 
resumed, “a delegation of hornets of a 
different sort appeared on the scene. 
They had bigger heads than the others 
— hammer-shaped — about the shape and 
size of a pecan nut, with an eye in either 
extremity. All work stop^>ed while they 
examined me. Then they found my 
camera and gun lying among the bones, 
and became greatly agitated. Minia- 
ture tractors, whirring busily, dragged 




these articles to the water’s edge, whence 
the ship took them aboard with a crane. 
They did likewise with the binoculars 
and various things which had been re- 
moved from my pockets. 



108 



ASTOUNDING SCIENCE-FICTION 



“By this time, twilight was upon us. 
The tractors and some other mobile 
mechanisms returned into the ship. Oth- 
ers were left near me, hooded with trans- 
lucent coverings. The horde of workers 
took wing in military formation, and the 
ship purred quietly across the water to 
its island harbor. It seemed taken for 
granted that my paralysis would con- 
tinue undiminished until the carnivorous 
swarm returned to begin their dissect- 
ing operations next morning. 

“DARKNESS fell, and the islet sud- 
denly twinkled with a thousand pinpoint 
lights which flashed on in groups — one 
after another — as if somewhere a series 
of electric switches had been thrown. I 
could not be sure, but it seemed that a 
faint peal of little chimes came drifting 
across the lake, like the tinkling of a 
toy piano. Then after a time, the lights 
blinked out, and I lay in almost com- 
plete darkness. 

“A scarlet glow centered around each 
of the Lilliputian foundries on the islet, 
and I could see the quivering reflections 
of stars in the lake. I could not turn 
my head to look up. The wind rustled 
in the blackness of the all-encompassing 
forest. I felt no physical pain — I could 
not feel the bones I lay upon. I might 
just as well have been a wooden image. 
But the mental torment ! You can- 

not imagine the agony— lying helpless, 
moveless, silent — feeling that I was lost 
in the midst of a vast, dark, empty in- 
difference — awaiting a fate which I did 
not dare to imagine 

“But I was not lost. After the pas- 
sage of an immeasurable abyss of time, 
I heard a tiny sound in the night — a 
metallic tinkle, infinitely remote. At 
first I thought that it came from the 
island, and was the precursor of dawn. 
But it came from the forest behind me. 
It came nearer. It was the clank of 
Gunga’s cow-bell. 

“Why he had returned to the cave, 
how he sensed whither I had gone, why 



he brought the bell with him, I can only 
guess. Perhaps in some obscure way 
the familiar clangor of the bell gave him 
courage. 

“Gunga Din came stumbling toward 
me with a clacking and rattling of dis- 
turbed bones. He breathed in great 
whistling gasps of fear. Then he touched 
me, rolled me over on my back, stooped 
and sniffed at my nostrils. I could see 
his squat, neckless shape silhouetted 
against the stars. Fantastic situation! 
To any other human being, under any 
other conditions, he would have been a 
terrifying sight. To me he was an angel 
of deliverance, and that bell was a 
golden harp. 

“Either the members of the Golden 
Swarm have very poor hearing, or they 
do not fly by night under any circum- 
stances. Whatever the reason, the clank 
of the bell did not rouse them. Gunga 
Din threw me over his shoulder as if I 
were a sack of meal and commenced the 
return journey. One of my ears lay 
against his hairy back, and I could hear 
his massive heart chugging and pound- 
ing with terror, 

“To my distraught brain that return 
was like a lunatic’s dream. Imagine it ! 
Hanging limply over the shoulder of a 
shaggy ape, fleeing in the .dead of' night 
through the blackness of an ancient for- 
est, to the accompaniment of a clanking 
cow-bell ! 

“It was broad daylight when we ar- 
rived at the cave. Kwanga and his 
troop of porters had arrived with my 
supplies — now useless to me — as we had 
arranged six months before. They were 
squatting in a circle before my cave, 
looking very sorrowful, but leaped to 
their feet with Shouts of amazement 
when Gunga Din dropped me at the 
edge of the forest and fled. 

“There is not much to tell after that. 
Eventually I was brought to a hospital 
in Mombasa. The paralysis began to 
disappear slowly. If I hadn’t been so 



ISLE OF THE GOLDEN SWARM 



109 



prompt in plucking out the darts — but 
why tliink of that? I started home, then 
had a nervous breakdown just before we 
reached Port Said. I was — well, psy- 
chopathic. I had the Horrors. They 
put me off the ship there, and into an- 
other hospital. It took me three months 
to get into condition to travel again.” 
“If you had something tangible, some 
material evidence, to support your state- 
ments,” I remarked, “they would be 
much more credible.” 

“Material evidence!” McGrath ex- 
ploded. “Look at me! I’m E.xhibit A! 
What more do you want?” 

Then he checked himself. 

“No, you’re right,” he sighed. “I 
might be just an eccentric invalid. 
Well — look at this. It isn’t much, but 
it’s all that I have in the way of proof. 
Kwanga found them in the remnants of 
my clothes.” 



McGrath produced a silver cigarette 
case from his coat pocket, opened it, 
and displayed several small objects on 
a bed of cotton. Of course, the things 
like phonograph needles may have been 
only that. But they were peculiar in 
being minutely perforated and channeled 
near their points. And the cotton round 
about where each needle lay was faintly 
tinted with yellow. The two remaining 
objects were well within the range of 
the abilities of Oriental craftsmen skilled 
in the making of tiny ornaments. I 
have seen ivory carvings much more 
minute and intricate. And yet — these 
things were of metal and had the trim, 
severe lines, of machine-made articles. 

One of the objects was a cutlass about 
one inch in length, with a delicately cor- 
rugated handle of gun-metal gray. The 
other was a miniature chromium cross- 
bow, powered by springs of blue steel. 



Dr Jin the columns of 

KEiiill 4 DYNAMIC MEN 

NOW APPEARING IN “PIC” MAGAZINE 

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"T TH E NATi ON^ScM AGAZIN E:^0 F^ENTERTAl N M ENT 




110 



THREE THOU 



by THOMAS 



Concluding McClary’s novel of 
and rebuilt under 




Gamble had atomic power, bat it was a frightful tool — too mighty by far 
for technicians who knew only hydro and steam plants. 



SAND YEARS!” 

CALVERT McCLARY 

a world demolished by Time 

the conflicting leadership of two men. 



SYNOPSIS OF PART II. 

' WO dynamic and diametrically 
opposed men ruled the two 
worlds which constituted civili- 
zation on Earth. Vincent Drega, who 
had come up from a boss contractor to 
the financial power behind governments 
and empires, was still a builder at heart. 
He zvas intensely human, and intensely 
conscious of human weaknesses. He 
took the world as it was and made the 
most of it. 

Simon Gamble was the greatest elec- 
tronic scientist of all times, a genius 
whose thoughts ran to idealistic, scien- 
tific perfection. He thought of MAN — 
not of men. 

Inevitably the two zvere to clash. The 
clash came when Gamble proposed to 
produce gold at the price of copper, and 
grow wheat for a cent per bushel. It 
zvould save Mankind, he said. 

Drega was appalled. No progress was 
zvorth the cost of a shattered economic 
system. He realized that the greatest 
of all resources of Earth was the eco- 
nomic system zvhich made all other re- 
sources available. 

The tzvo men quarreled and parted. 
Gamble made public what he would do. 
Markets crashed, factories closed, indus- 
try came to a standstill. The poor, the 
underpaid laborers, the very men he had 
zvanted to help, turned bitterly against 
him. His tnere announcement nearly 
broke the System that fed them. 

Gamble, seeking perfection in the 
world, saw that the economic system — 
traditions — habits — were his enemies. 



Only a complete break zvith those tra- 
ditions zvould enable man to shake off 
the shackles of centuries of thought- 
habit and take up progress in a de- 
tached light of pure values. Ten years 
after his quarrel zvith Drega, he threw 
mankind into suspended animation. 

Three thousand years later, Man 
azvoke. Life in bodies had merely been 
asleep. But life on Earth had gone on. 
Time had wrecked the world. 

Without question, Drega took mat- 
ters in hand. Men had nothing left to 
build zvith or live by but bare hands. 
All else had been destroyed. He estab- 
lished trade and wages and the profit 
motive. He had Manhattan — the ruins 
that had been the City of New York — 
surveyed. He fought zvith savage, starv- 
ing, cannibal tribes, and organized the 
interests of his clan. 

But his methods were the old meth- 
ods, the human methods. 

His clan had food enough — but no 
more. They were building. Slowly, 
they were forming a crude basis of civili- 
zation as it had been. Drega sazv the 
hopelessness of taking expert technicians 
and trying to achieve former ciznlization 
overnight. First was the important item 
of Man’s very existence, and then the 
slow beginning from crude implements 
and manual labor. 

Into this toolless, foodless, clothesless 
dawn of a reborn ciznlization came Si- 
mon Gamble zvith all the equipment and 
pharaphernalia of his advanced science 
laboratory. In perfect condition, his pri- 
vate labs had been protected by a shield- 
ing atmosphere of pure hydrogen. 




ASTOUNDING SCIENCE-FICTION 



112 

'A battle between two systems ensued. 
Drega was unable to offer the necessi- 
ties of life beyond his ability to organise 
and make men work with the tools and 
power and resources at hand. Gamble 
offered immediate sustenance, assurance 
of food and heat and clothing. But 
more, he offered the highly trained and 
specialised technicians the tools with 
which they were familiar, and a world 
without the money — the economics — he 
hated. 

There was not room in the new civili- 
sation for compromise with the old bar- 
ter and trade and profit systems, or com- 
promise with the new perfection science. 
One had to go. 

Drega left, taking a bare handful of 
loyal men of all the thousands he had 
saved. It was not an easy choice for 
the men who followed Drega. Ahead 
of them lay a wilderness, no conven- 
iences of civilisation, an almost primeval 
land to strip from the roots up. Behind 
them lay the basic security of Gamble’s 
world. But they did not trust that basic 
security, that order and regimentation 
which left no room for compromise, no 
room for inbred traditions, no room for 
human error. 

Gamble suddenly remembered the 
clan’s extreme emaciation and privation. 
There would be a feast. But he had not 
brought much food from the laboratory. 
He brought out a small watch-sised 
gadget, a highly advanced radio trans- 
mission set, to radio the boat to pick up 
food. Two wires trailed off this small 
radio. 

Gamble hooked one wire to his belt. 
It was his own invention, infinitely su- 
perior to the type of radio used in the 
yesterday of three thousand years before. 
He looked around abstractedly, his mind 
lost in a tremendous, efficient, scientifi- 
cally planned future. 

“Where’s a water pipef” he asked, 
still abstracted. “I need a running-wa- 
ter pipe for this radio.” 

Prescott, once newspaper publisher. 



swore for one of the few times in his 
life. He pointed at the disappearing 
boat. “Out there! Water pipe! Oh, 
hell and damnation!” Then he looked 
at Gamble hesitantly, speculatively. He 
began to wonder. 

XIV. 

G amble and Drega were more 
alike than they imagined. Gam- 
ble, too, had the dynamic urge 
to do things. He, too, was an organizer. 
But where Drega organized and drove 
men. Gamble organized and drove sci- 
ence. 

It was with cold detachment that he 
had put mankind into suspended ani- 
mation — for between fifty and seventy- 
five years. Somehow — it shocked him 
to think it even possible — his calcula- 
tions erred. Three thousand years 
slipped by. Only a time-resisting blan- 
ket of pure hydrogen had saved his labo- 
ratories. 

Yet, from a scientific standpoint, the 
error was a benefit. 

Take gold. Drega had said cheap 
gold would shatter the world’s economic 
system. Well, the system was shattered 
— completely. There was no longer rea- 
son for Man to think of money or in- 
vestments. They could build a new 
civilization free of the inherent traditions 
and weaknesses of the old. 

This would be a civilization of pure 
science ! 

Gamble delivered his promised feast 
to the clan — fourteen cases of food. 
Three thousand people looked at the 
small pile with astonishment. 

Gamble smiled. “Concentrated. I 
assure you, it is sufficient.” 

His four assistants prepared the lavish 
feast in a special catalytic stove. Twen- 
ty-three hors d’ceuvres occupied a space 
about one inch square! 

But — ^the course was delicious. So 
was the half gill of soup. At the end 



“THREE THOUSAND YEARS !’^ 



113 



came a striped pill about the size of a 
peanut. 

“What’s this ?’’ Prescott grunted skep- 
tically. 

Gamble smiled. “A complete banana 
split. Twelve trimmings.” 

The copper man leaned over to Lucky. 
“I’m not hungry, but I’ll be damned if 
I et yet! A dinner just don’t seem 
right unless you got something to wade 
into.” 

Later Lucky found him nibbling joy- 
ously on a piece of dried fish. 

Early the next day Gamble began 
classifying people, picking out leading 
mathematicians, architects, metallurgical 
and viscose chemists, electronists, engi- 
neers, artisans and technicians. He gave 
the afternoon over to physical inspec- 
tion. 

“Terrible,” he muttered. 

Lucky grunted. “The white-collar 
workers are healthier than ever before! 
Lilly Peters, who used to keep our books, 
knocked the tar out of a coal heaver 
last week!” 

“Oh, physically the clan’s all right,” 
Gamble said negligently. “But I fear 
malnutrition of carbohydrates has re- 
duced the capacity for acute concentra- 
tion. How long can you think of one 
thing ?” 

Lucky’s eye fell on Lulu Belle. “I’ve 
been thinking about one thing two 
years.” 

Gamble examined him as he would 
study a bug. “Amazing! Perfect case 
of arrested adolescence.” 

Lucky said, “Huh ?” 

"About thirteen. I’d judge,” Gamble 
said. 

Lulu Belle eyed Lucky suspiciously. 
“You’d better be more than thirteen if 
you want to marry me. Lucky Flag- 
herty.” 

‘*Oh, we’ll treat his adrenal glands and 
bring him up to age,” Gamble an- 
nounced. “As soon as he matures he’ll 
realize that you’re the wrong girl for 
him eugenically in any event.” 

AST— 8 



Lulu Belle glowered after Gamble’s 
back. 

MATERIAL for clothing appeared, 
but it was a heavy, mottled-gray pulp 
composition. The women looked at it 
doubtfully. 

“Oh, the silk was just a test product,” 
Gamble explained. “It’s obsolete. This 
is both warm and cool and waterproof. 
It allows the skin to breathe. It can 
be discarded like paper. You’ll notice 
seams along the edges. Wet them and 
press them together and your clothing 
is made.” 

“But it won’t be stylish!” Lulu Belle 
complained. “It looks like mud.” 

“Styles and color are anachronisms,” 
Gamble said. “They have meaning only 
to the savage.” 

“But I’m still a savage!” Lulu Belle 
announced. 

“As soon as we have time,” Gamble 
said tolerantly, “we’ll treat glands to rid 
you of such hangovers.” 

“Well, it looks like progress is here 
in person,” Lulu Belle noted sarcasti- 
cally to Prescott. 

Prescott said, “There’s a lot in what 
he says. We are still thinking with the 
minds and memories of three thousand 
years ago.” 

Gamble was highly disappointed with 
reports on the city. “We’ll need com- 
prehensive mineralogical and chemical 
surveys immediately,” he announced. 

"But the cannibals are still out there !” 
Lucky said. 

“Highly interesting! The human 
body’s ability to adapt itself to violent 
changes is one of the mysteries of sci- 
ence. We will have sufficient specimens 
of cannibalism and mineral diet to make 
real studies.” 

“Are you going to kill them?” Pres- 
cott asked hesitantly. 

“Oh, by no means! Live specimens 
are more valuable. We’ll simply para- 
lyze all animal activity imthe cannibal 
^It for a few days.” 



114 



ASTOUNDING SCIENCE-FICTION 



His next step with the dan was an 
antiseptic chemical bath, running them 
through a contraption like a sheep dip. 
After that, an electric treatment toned 
up the glands and vitality. It had a 
miraculous effect. Wounds, cuts and 
colds which had been weeks healing, 
healed in twenty-four hours. 

BUT GAMBLE might have foreseen 
much from the clan’s reaction. Mild 
ailments had given individuals some- 
thing to think and grumble about. 
They had nothing wrong with them- 
selves now. and their minds turned to 
whatever else they could find. 

There was much gibing about the 
pump and endless pipe which Gamble 
had to use for his “super” radio which 
had to be hooked up to a running-water 
pipe for transmission. 

Becker, a radio operator, snorted, 
“That’s progress!” 

Gamble’s laboratory was lighted by 
highly advanced methods, but he kept 
a supply of “electric bottles” which he 
presented to the clan. A twist of the 
top caused the bottle to shine. Small 
appliances could be plugged in. 

Preliminary surveys showed heavy 
surface ores, and the exact location of 
tantalum, silver, bronze, gold and heavy 
copper supplies. Soaps, tars, glues and 
waxes had been located. A large chunk 
of heavy purple metal was brought back. 

“Gold-aluminum alloy,” Gamble 
noted with interest. 

“I’ve always wanted a set of gold 
plates,” Lulu Belle enthused. 

Gamble sighed. “A set of iron plates 
would be more valuable right now.” 

The metallurgists were excited over 
the possibilities of unknown metals and 
alloys as the result of chemical action, 
pressure and the passage of time. Never 
before, for instance, had copper been 
soaked with formaldehyde or prussic 
acid and left to corrode in salt atmos- 
phere for three thousand years. 

Gamble called a meeting. 



“We are going to build an entirely 
new civilization for the first time in his- 
tory! All previous cycles have grown 
out of the traditions of old people.” 

The architects, particularly, grasped 
the immensity of the vision. 

“We need steel in large quantities,” 
Phillips, most visionary of the architects, 
noted. 

Gamble shook his head. “Steel passed 
with the world’s slumber. A much bet- 
ter material is tantalectron, for some 
years tested and the technique of produc- 
tion secretly perfected. It was withheld 
for fear of wrecking the open-hearth 
steel industry. Three hundred tons of 
mild steel would be required to give the 
equivalent tensile strength of one ton of 
tantalectron.” 

“Is that a theoretical comparison?” 
Phillips asked. 

Gamble’s eyes lit with pardonable 
pride. “No, it’s a practical working 
comparison !” 

“Could open-hearth furnaces be con- 
verted?” 

Gamble looked boyishly embarrassed. 
“There is a slight difficulty. Nitrate is 
needed from Chile. And special glass 
furnaces are needed for smelting. We 
know how to make glass, but so far 
we don’t know of any substance in which 
glass can be made in quantity.” 

PHILLIPS sprang into the awkward 
silence. “What is the first vital neces- 
sity, Gamble?” 

“Gold.” Then the scientists ex- 
plained, “We need considerable quanti- 
ties of gold wire to maintain our food 
supply. But there is something more 
important.” 

What could be more important than 
food? 

“We can transmute gold into highly 
resistant steel!” 

“Is there enough gold ?” Steig asked. 

“The process results in expansion by 
both weight and volume. All the duro 



“THREE THOUSAND YEARS!” 



115 



metils should be left. We'll make a new 
alloy.” 

Lucky whispered to Prescott, “This 
is getting a little complicated.” 

Prescott snapped, “You’re not on the 
editorial page ! , That reminds me. I 
must put in a bid for presses. No pro- 
tection of public interests without a free 
press. Harrrumm.” 

Gamble was saying, “There is more 
free gold available than any other metal. 
It should be a simple matter to get into 
the sub-Treasury and Drega vaults. An- 
other point is that most of the power 
equipment I can give you operates on 
atomic energy. Inversely from transmu- 
tation of iron into gold, with a high 
production energy cost, when transmut- 
ing gold into iron, there is a high atomic 
energy by-product.” 

XV. 

IT WAS TALLIS of the Tallis Vault 
Works who pointed out: “You’re go- 

ing to have difficulty getting into those 
vaults. It will surprise me if there is 
any noticeable corrosion.” 

Gamble said, “We have electronic 
torches which could cut the vault by 
disintegration. But they use radio-active 
substance of exceptionally high wave 
length.” 

Pritchard, the electronocist, nodded. 
“It would break down the vaults all 
right. But — also the gold before you 
ever got to it.” . 

Salter of the Corinth Glass Works 
looked up hesitantly. “We haven’t 
acids or explosives; what we need is 
some solvent powerful enough to take 
concrete, iron, copper or lead in its 
•stride. An acid glass — one with excess 
silica — ^is the nearest approach to the 
universal solvent I know of. But we 
need clay.” 

Gamble was shaken with growing 
doubts. Was civilization, science, to 
crumble for want of clay? Good cruci- 



ble clay was almost a treasure and came 
from distant places. 

Salter said grimly, “We can try local 
clay and prayers. The clay by itsedf 
won’t make Indian pottery.” 

They knew their clays and sands in- 
timately, those lean, liquid-death chal- 
lengers. With Gamble’s Ixiat, they 
searched the shores. But they did not 
find their clay along the shoreline. They 
found it when Gamble came back from 
inspection and Salter picked a piece off 
his boot. 

“Now we need potash and lead ox- 
ide,” Salter said energetically. “We 
found a coarse sand that will do.” 

Gamble said, relievedly. “I can make 
the potash and lead oxide for you. How 
much do you need?” 

“About two tons of high grade ash 
and five of lead.” 

Gamble stared. Salter was serious. 
“That would be two months’ work for 
the laboratory’s combined kilns ! And 
this new kiln won’t be finished for 
weeks.” 

Leading men of the new world, glass- 
makers, electronocists, chemists, engi- 
neers, scientists stood with set faces. In 
that clan there were men who knew 
how to direct any activity of industry 
or science. 

But not one man could work from the 
ground up! They thought in millions 
of kilowatts or volts, hundred ton lots, 
hundred thousand horsepower equip- 
ment. They were above the raw earth 
and nature, unable to get down. 

Drega had recognized this and started 
at the bottom. 

Lucky whispered, “Remember Abe 
Lincoln? Here’s the gang whose legs 
aren’t quite long enough to reach the 
ground.” 

“You,” Prescott said, “are going to 
get fired — hm-m-m — as soon as I can 
hire you again!” He was thoroughly 
sold on progress in big jumps. He 
wanted a printing press again. 



116 



ASTOUNDING SCIENCE-FICTION 



THE FIRST snow flurried that 
morning. A cold wind blew off the 
river. But Gamble’s clan were in excel- 
lent spirits. They had warm clothing. 

It was unnecessary, with the new 
plastic clothing, to wear outer garments. 
It was windproof. and the inner finish- 
ing acted automatically to hold heat near 
the body temperature. It was an in- 
herent property of the material. 

Gamble’s face was. hard as they 
started operations on the sub-Treasury 
vault. His laboratory had not been 
set up to produce supplies in industrial 
quantities. He had taken a risk which 
he had not mentioned to anybody. For 
the three utility machines — they could 
be used for almost anything from hoists 
to drilling — he had taken fully three- 
quarters of his remaining supply of 
atomic fuel. 

Unless they got at that gold, his labo- 
ratory was going to become a finely 
keyed mechanism without fuel. And to 
get more fuel out of the ground they 
needed some of that gold transmuted 
into iron and steel and energy. 

They had, they all fervently prayed, 
solved the problem of getting the vault 
open. They would tackle it with lim- 
ited glass operations. 

Gamble had brought down his one 
tractor, a heavy steamer which he con- 
sidered the most efficient motive power 
for this type of work. “I have never 
seen an obstacle other than a sheer rock 
face it could not surmount,” he said. 
He was pleased with the way it was 
hauling a load of clay. 

Fate presented the other obstacle. No 
March Detail had goose-stepped ahead 
of the heavy unit. No Drega had fore- 
seen catastrophe. It suddenly dropped 
from sight. There was a splash and a 
jet of water. When they grappled, 
they found it jammed solid beneath 
thirty feet of water. 

Sand, potash, lead oxide, clay for the 
crucible and lime to aid the coke fire 



had been hauled by hand. The coke 
had come from Gamble’s precious lalx)- 
ratory supply. Gamble, himself, had 
treated it with a special hydrogen 
process. 

With materials in place and fire pit 
and chimney fashioned, Salter signalled 
Gamble. “I’m not sure this can be done. 
It wasn’t in the textbooks.” He smiled 
wryly. “It takes exceedingly good clay 
to hold molten glass. If we tried mak- 
ing a hard crucible first, we might waste 
ten or twenty weeks. So we’ve left 
blow holes in this clay form.” 

Gamble nodded. “You’ll melt your 
primary mi.xture and hope the form 
doesn’t break up before it coats.” 

Salter shook his head. “The clay is 
mostly a mold for a glass reinforcing. 
If the reinforcing holds and the clay 
doesn’t crack away from the blow holes, 
we’ll have glass.” 

Salter looked at his gang, nervous 
with unfamiliar units and materials. 
They had to work clown in the trench 
beside the vault. If that form failed — 
molten glass was going to sweep out 
knee-deep. 

SILENT, the clan stood around 
while Salter studied every vapor steam- 
ing from the form. “Drag fire!” he 
yelled as the steam suddenly changed 
tinge. 

In the pit there was furious scram- 
bling to drag the searing fire. Fasci- 
nated, the clan watched the skin of the 
glass workers blister and peel back from 
the raging heat. Withiir five minutes, 
somebody had to get beneath that pre- 
carious form and knock loose a bung to 
dump the molten overload within. 

The pit was raked, chemicals to cool 
it thrown in. Water got into the pit. 
There was a spot of ice not two feet 
from where the ground itself burned. 

“She’s clear!” the gang foreman 
called. “Knock the bung?” 

His eyes were too puffed, and his 



“THREE THOUSAND YEARS!” 



117 




Gamble thought of Salter — Salter dying horribly, knowingly, 
for success. But — what if there were no success? 



voice too thick to tell the emotion there. 
But Rumplemeyer knew he was asking 
for a quick and terrible exodus from 
this Earth. Ordinarily, a reliable cru- 
cible was lifted by automatic crane and 
carried to a distance for dumping. 

“No,” said Salter, “come up.” He 



waited for the tired men to clamber 
from the pit. He signalled Rumple- 
meyer. “You understand the mixture 
for tomorrow? You’ll have to gauge 
your heat. There are no pyrometers.” 
Rumplemeyer said dizzily, “Yts, I un- 
derstand. But you’ll be here.” 



118 



ASTOUNDING SCIENCE-FICTION 



Salter said, “Don’t forget to add lime 
silica immediately when the vapors turn 
deep yellow.’’ 

Calmly he picked up a heavy sledge 
and climbed down the ladder. Care- 
fully he studied the trench flooring and 
the bottom of the clay form. A tiny jet 
of milky substance broke out a hole and 
spurted past his shoulder. 

Salter looked up at the crowd once. 

Lucky said, “Jumping Judas, you 
can't ’’ 

Salter swung the sledge. A shower 
of molten glass flew. Again he swung. 
A thick milky jet pounded out from the 
bottom of the form. It looked beauti- 
ful and harmless. Its vapors spread 
heavily. 

Lucky’s glance switched back to Sal- 
ter. The vapors were reaching out 
thickly to hide the man. But Lucky saw 
the white stuff rising around him. 

Only it wasn’t rising. It was eating 
him down from beneath. Salter’s one 
shriek rang as his head disappeared in 
the molten liquid. Then the trench was 
filled with smoke and vapor and fumes. 

Only once that night did Lucky speak 
to Rumplemeyer. “Was it necessary to 
stay down for that last strike?” 

Rumplemeyer nodded heavily. “The 
form was beginning to go. He had to 
get that weight out of there quickly. It 
would have been the same if the whole 
bung had gone on the first-strike. But 
he should have let me do it.” 

Gamble, too, spoke only once, softly 
to himself. “For science,” he said in 
tribute. “Ah, that is the way to go.” 
He did not know that Lucky was listen- 
ing. The reporter wondered vaguely 
whether 

IN THE COLD light of dawn, Rum- 
plemeyer took tools into the trench and 
climbed onto its slick, bluish-tinted floor. 
Carefully, he broke off one of the milky 
jets that hung like icicles from the clay 
mold. Then he broke out a measured 
section of clouded glass beneath the 



mold and carried the chunks above. 

The sun was just rising as they 
placed those chunks into an ancient 
Ming vase and lowered the vase care- 
fully into hallowed ground behind the 
remaining cathedral. Rumplemeyer 
smiled through his tears. He did not 
know the vase’s museum value, but he 
recognized the skill of a great artisan. 

“It is good,” he said simply. “It is 
the way he would have liked.” 

An hour later, Rumplemeyer was 
swearing at crazy descendants of apes 
who didn't know how to give a glass 
man the things he called for. 

XVI. 

NOT UNTIL years later, when the 
bits of the puzzle of those days fell into 
place, did Lucky fully understand Gam- 
ble’s panic that bleak morning. 

Gamble was frightened, frightened of 
an abstracted thing — failure. He did 
not think of himself, or the millions of 
lives depending upon that gold. He 
did not think of the bitter struggle back 
to civilization. 

He thought of Salter dying know- 
ingly and horribly — for success. What 
if there were no success? 

New determination fired the glass 
gang. They were to need it in the com- 
ing hours. Rumplemeyer had sounded 
the filled crucible from twenty direc- 
tions with a bronze rod. It was too 
soft to be sure of. Maybe it was bet- 
ter so. It would not be so liable to split. 

Without hesitation, the gang mixed 
materials, saw to their working room, 
inspected every inch of the vault against 
which they would try to boil glass so 
that if one man went, another could in- 
stantly take his place. 

It was not unusual "fo go” in that 
trade. A dizzy moment from heat or 
fumes, a slip, a second of unwariness — 
there was no rescue for a glass man. 

In spite of the shock of Salter’s death, 
Tallis felt glad that he had lived to see 



“THREE THOUSAND YEARS!” 



119 



his own handiwork. The vault cement 
was solid. Not as solid as it had once 
been, but more solid than any other 
cement in the city. That was because 
of the intricate design of the reinforcing, 
ami the special chemical nature of the 
cement. The iron reinforcing had cor- 
rotied very little and the cement had 
given to the growth within. It was still 
sound. 

It was not until later that night that 
the molten glass began to form. With 
great care Rumplemeyer nursed it along. 
There was a trick to the cooking of 
glass, an even temperature throughout. 
Now, though, he needed an acid glass. 

At daylight they added the final mix- 
tures. At noon Rumplemeyer got so 
close to the vapors that heat peeled 
flesh off his nose and lips. Sudden puffs 
began to issue from the crucible and he 
nodded. "It is ready.” 

He turned below t* personally knock 
the outlet against the bank vault. It was 
tricky working with molten glass .spat- 
tering down beside their very sides. 
Each shift of the crucible spelled possi- 
ble destruction. 

Slicing out like a thin milk-white 
snake, the molten glass ate against tlie 
vault. It went through cement and 
rust and iron like butter. But Willis 
shook his head. Beyond that, twenty- 
two plies of crossed steel. And still 
beyond, more solid steel. 

But even that might be negotiated. 
The difficult part still lay beyond — four 
separate two-inch plates of copper, with 
heavy ply and woven layers of lead be- 
tween. Willis remembered that there 
were forty-eight thousand cubic feet of 
copper and ninety-six of lead. 

FOR THREE solid days the glass 
gang worked. Hourly, they were car- 
ried from the pit and returned when 
they came to. Their bodies looked like 
raw meat and then began to turn black. 
On the third day, Rumplemeyer stag- 
gered out of the pit. He had lost one 



third of his weight, and he had Iieen 
solid bone and muscle to start with. 

“We have a hole through the steel 
block packing and the next steel plate.” 
Gamble said, “Magnificent!” 
Rumplemeyer said, “No. The heat 
is melting the copper and lead inside. 
It comes through the hole as fast as we 
burn. If we stop, it hardens and we 
are nowhere. All that inner lining will 
have to be cooked out. And when we 
finish, all the space will be filled with 
pressure glass.” 

Gamble whitened. Willis nodded. 
Gamble said, “What can we do?” 
Never had he asked that of man be- 
fore. And he was asking a pit foreman ! 

Rumplemeyer shook his head. Salter 
had 

“We’ll get through, sir.” His voice 
was grim. “It ain’t going to be easy, 
but we’ve got only about three feet of 
copper and lead to cut. The copper 
goes into solution in that hot glass pretty 
easy. Lead’ll run. If we once get a 
hole into that lead, let it harden again, 
then run some more glass, we'll have 
a glass-lined hole. That way, we’ll reach 
the steel beyond.” 

“How — long?” asked Gamble tightly. 
“Six weeks — workin’ like hell.” 
Gamble sat back heavily. “Work like 
hell then, Rumplemeyer. We’ve got to 

get that gold. Gold ” He laughed 

grimly and rather unsteadily. He’d 
brought this suspension — this ruin — ^be- 
cause he hated gold and the compromises 
gold and the love of gold had forced on 

that long-gone civilization. And he 

“Yes, work like hell ” 

Work had been called off, and only 
a fire-crew was on duty. The others 
were being treated by Gamble’s experts. 
Queer radiations that accompanied some 
of his atomic release experiments were 
utterly deadly to infection, fearfully and 
wonderfully stimulating to healing. But 
they exhausted the patient’s body so that 
he must sleep twelve full hours, to arise 
sound and fit. 



120 



ASTOUNDING SCIENCE-FICTION 



It was miraculous, but Gamble could 
find, now. no gratification in this knowl- 
edge that made it possible to turn baked 
meat back to sound, living manhood. 
For Gamble accepted automatically the 
advanced tools of a great civilization. 
It was the lack of them — that boring 
through stubborn concrete and steel with 
molten glass — that paralyzed his imagi- 
nation. 

Gamble did not know how men had 
first built their weary way through ten 
thousand years to civilization. Gamble 
could not find that road again, nor could 
his experts. If that gold vault defied 
tliem — if that slim chain of vast science 
his laboratory preserved should break — 
Gamble would be broken. He had no 
second string. Drega could work with 
raw rock and brute power, could build 
again. Gamble could not. He knew it. 

TALLIS had been watching the glass 
workers, watching the efforts to break 
that mighty fortress of wealth he'd built. 
It was a grim satisfaction to him to see 
the impregnable solidity of it withstand- 
ing these assaults as it had weathered the 
three millenniums of time. He moved 
over, now, toward Gamble and Rum- 
plemeyer, near the healing radiations. 

“They’re digging a trench around to- 
ward the front of the vault. What is 
the plan now, Rumplemeyer ?” he asked 
curiously. 

“Shunt the cooling glass away before 
it hardens in place and plugs the hole it 
cut. We’ve been breaking it out with 
sledges, but it’s where we can’t swing, 
now.’’ 

“You stopped just short of the lime- 
layer, I noticed. There’s ’’ 

Rumplemeyer turned sharply. 
“‘Lime-layer?’ What the hell — what 
do you mean, ‘lime-layer’?’’ 

Tallis stepped back startled. “Why, 
between two layers of two-inch copper 
tliere’s that layer of lime — lime-cement 
- -I told you about.” 



“What’s ‘lime-cement’?” snapped the 
glass man. 

“Quick-lime and water mixed, 
pounded into place. It stops oxygen 
torches. It won’t melt, and drinks the 
heat.” 

Rumplemeyer sat down weakly. “Oh, 
Lord. Lime.” He shook his head 
slowly. “One of the few things on F.arth 
that glass can’t cut. We have to use 
an acid glass. Lime glass is basic. It 
won’t cut steel. It won’t cut copper. 
And it won’t melt.” 

Gamble took a hesitant step toward 
the steaming pit where men still workerl. 
Some of the others of the clan were dig- 
ging there. Shovels threw dirt up to a 
mound of raw earth. 

There was a shout down there sud- 
denly. Then a lurid cursing, and sud- 
den silence. Two of Gamble’s medical 
assistants started forward on the run. 
Six of the glass workers mounted from 
the pit, cold fury blazing in their eyes, 
their blistered faces. They walked past 
the medical men unheeding, their eyes 
on Gamble. The biggest of them halted 
menacingly before the scientist, a heavy 
pick-handle clenched in white-knuckled 
hands. 

“Listen, you run-down genius, did 
you know about that vault?” 

“Know — know about ? You 

mean the lime? No.” Gamble shook 
his head despondently. The slim thread 
— the chain to the past — was broken. 

“Lime, hell! The door, you damned 
crackpot! You let Salter die — and the 
door !” 

“Oh — ,” said Tallis softly. “The time 
lock would go off^ ” 

XVII. 

DREGA was later to laugh about th.is. 
It was the very gold Gamble condemned 
that made possible his resurrection of 
civilization. Without it, he could not 
have sustained the food supply, nor 
mined iron in time. For Gamble’s world 



“THREE THOUSAND YEARS!” 



121 



simply did not understand the simple 
ways of their forefathers. 

Gold gave to the artisans and techni- 
cians the tool they understood and 
needed and had confidence in. It gave 
them power. It made possible again the 
correlation of experts and specialists, 
for many men knew only one division 
of their trade. 

Phillips, for instance, could not cut 
and join pipe, although he could figure 
the total pipe length in a building to 
inches. Foundation masons were lost 
on precise chimney work. 

But it was not possible to jump im- 
mediately into the world Gamble 
dreamed of. His laboratory worked at 
peak capacity. He had expert help. 
Many of the scientists, professors and 
post-graduate students of the university 
had survived. 

He had reclaimed the cannibal tribes 
and released a surprisingly large num- 
ber of the people still living under- 
ground. From eighty-four thousand 
people who had survived, he could select 
specialists in almost any line. 

The first work was reclaiming the 
spoils of the dead city. But equipment 
was terribly limited. They needed tre- 
mendous amounts of lime and coke and 
charcoal. 

To Gamble, charcoal had always been 
something which one telephoned for and 
received. Occasionally, for exceedingly 
delicate work, he made his own in small 
quantities, but in a special electric oven 
designed for just that. There was no 
material to make a larger oven of that 
order. 

Thornton was a former owner of a 
vast charcoal works supplying the alloy- 
steel industry. But Thornton had never 
made anything except specified high 
qualities of charcoal. He had ordered 
special woods from one locality, clays 
from another. He had used chemicals 
which were not available. 

His pits had been specially prepared 
for draft. He simply said to the yard 



foreman, “Wouldn’t it improve the char 
combustion if we used forced draft and 
increased the pressure?” Exactly what 
the foreman had done, or how, Thorn- 
ton did not know. 

He took the woods and clay at hand. 
The clays he knew, but the wood grad- 
ing he had to take on another’s say-so. 
Except that it was wood of a quality 
and type his works never would have 
considered, he knew nothing about it. 

THERE WAS a battle over the use 
of the five power saws between Phillips 
and Thornton. Phillips was busily con- 
structing urgently needed temporary 
work houses. . Thornton wanted wood 
for fires immediately. Both of them had 
to wait. There was a slide at surface 
mine No. Six, and Rickards got the 
saws to cut emergency reinforcing tim- 
bers. 

Gamble considered handsaws archaic, 
but to supply the present shortage of 
machines he made one hundred cross- 
cut saws at his laboratory. Carpenters 
and woodsmen felt and sprang and 
tuned them with admiration. Never had 
they seen finer steel. 

The only trouble was they wouldn’t 
saw. They squealed and jammed. 
There was no kerosene and sawing was 
difficult at best. A lumberman said, 
“You set the teeth wrong. They 
shouldn’t be even.” 

Gamble colored. The type and tem- 
pering of that steel was such that the 
teeth couldn’t be changed. He had made 
the steel purposely to spring back into 
original shape. Reforging ruined the 
perfect quality of the steel. But the 
saws worked. 

Thornton superintended the piling and 
smothering of charcoal piles himself. He 
knew the piles were right, the proper 
amounts of clay laid on. How often 
had he worked on graphs and blueprints 
far into the night to get the right anr 
gles, the best positions for blowholes. 



122 



ASTOUNDING SCIENCE-FICTION 



the right amounts of clay and pressure? 

But his furnaces had been a hundred 
times the size of these. They had heat 
and pressure meters, and intricate mazes 
of drafts. -If he said, “Force sixteen 
draft,” the foreman carried out the rest. 
It was the foreman who arranged the 
draft vents, the damping, the piling. 
And the foreman was not there. 

A talkative old man watched Thorn- 
ton's gang. He talked incessantly about 
potato farming. When asked his opin- 
ion on anything he would go off into 
long-winded details of why it wouldn’t 
work. The charcoal, he said, would 
never cook. 

It didn’t. 

Three times Thornton tried his luck. 
The last time he got a poor quality char- 
coal. Why, he didn’t know. He had 
built his furnaces exactly as before. The 
garrulous old man shook his head. 

“Well,” Thornton snapped, “maybe 
you can make it?” 

The old man chortled. “Make it? I 
been making it for nigh on sixty years.” 

Thornton glared. “Why didn’t you 
say so?” 

“Nobody asked me.” 

The old man blew his nose, picked a 
tooth and regarded a bit of food on the 
end of his fingernail. “Why back before 
there was automobiles ” he started. 

Thornton forced him^self to listen. 
Twenty minutes later the old man said, 
“With a small furnace like these you 
got to burn your wood three days be- 
fore smothering.” 

Thornton snapped, “You idiot! The 
wood would burn up !” 

“Not if you do it right. You lay on 
your first blankets, but you don’t put 
on your pressure cover. Then your 
vents aren’t big enough for a small fur- 
nace. I reckon you just reduced the 
size of a regular furnace, but it don’t 
work that way.” 

The old man built the next fire. It 
made prime charcoal. 



THE WINTER cut into charcoal op- 
erations. It froze the clay beds. 

Gamble’s laboratories were working 
day and night. There was the food 
supply to be maintained which took up 
a large part of the staff's time. There 
were compounds to make, and surface 
ores to be tested. 

Gamble himself was busy on the per- 
fection of new alloys whic’n could be 
made out of reclaimed metals. These 
required wholely new treatments, since 
the original metal had had strange alloy- 
elements that must be allowed for. Each 
new process required experiment with 
chemicals which could be made from 
material at hand. 

Surrounding communities had not en- 
tered into the spirit of the new civiliza- 
tion. IMany of them were savage, arid 
people either attacked or hid at Gam- 
ble’s approach. Gamble was more bit- 
ter than ever at Drega. He had sent 
across the river and asked for fifteen 
tons of a common, but particular type 
of mica. He had offered tools, equip- 
ment, explosives to mine it with. 

Drega had held him up for fifteen 
tons of prime cement and kept the tools 
to boot. For a week the entire clan had 
had to stop work and concentrate on 
machinery and materials to make that 
cement. 

In mid-winter it became apparent that 
the new type of atomic power would 
not meet all needs. Men did not yet 
know how to make machines which it 
could operate, and they were careless 
with it. A crack electronocist had been 
blown to bits. Rushed and unable to 
find a meter handy, he had trusted to 
judgment to adjust the flow. 

Others were afraid of the atomic 
power. The lowest units ran a quar- 
ter of a million volts of d. c. which could 
not be transformed, and they had no 
insulation against the charges of mutilat- 
ing death. Half a dozen men had been 
killed while setting up power lines of 
iron wire, charred to cinders by the 



“THREE THOUSAND YEARS!” 



123 



giant arcs wliich burst across insulators. 
Oddly, one l)Iast of rampant power had 
knocked a lineman three hundred feet, 
but except for a badly burned spot on 
one shoulder, he had suffered no great 
injury. 

Morosely, Gamble ordered hydro- 
electric and coal plants. It meant a de- 
ci<!ed change in plans. It meant bulky, 
cumbersome and heavy machines were 
needetl in quantity. It meant cable and 
insulation and tremendous man power. 
It meant time and work investment for 
an obsolete type of power which would 
not Ire used for more than four or five 
years at the most. 

“Cheer up,” said Phillips. “The men 
know how to handle this. With power 
they’re familiar with they can quickly 
make equipment for atomic power.” 

BUT GAMBLE did not cheer. Why 
couldn’t these men learn to use a new 
power which simply required caution 
and respect? The old forms of elec- 
tricity, like old steel, were a compromise. 
Compromise was the basic fault of 
Drega’s world, the very core of the old 
civilization’s canker. 

The great coal stores were over by the 
Brooklyn shipyards. A savage clan of 
cannibals held that area. A sizable ex- 
pedition set out with a paralyzing ray 
machine, but it was delicate and could 
not be easily transported. It took them 
five days to find the tunnel in which the 
most important tribe lived. Gamble’s 
men were almost struck down from be- 
hind before they knew their danger. 
But a heavy shock of the released rays 
put all except the insulated party into a 
state of physical paralysis. 

Gamble found the leader, obvious be- 
cause of three fur pieces, one of them 
a horsehide. They were not well tanned, 
and their warmth was doubtful. Gam- 
ble briefly stated their wants. 

The savage Ifeder studied them 
shrewdly. Once he had been a long- 
shoreman. He saw that Gamble’s peo- 



ple had things he wanted. What mat- 
tered how he got them? As soon as he 
found out, he would kill them off and 
have everything. He agreed. 

The need was for transport boats. A 
flat service type was decided upon. 
Gamble produced in one evening the 
specifications for an easily made plastic 
which would serve for hulls. It required 
wood and asbestos and tar. All were 
available on the island, but it threw the 
heavy work back on the lumber and 
mine departments. In the bitter, wet 
cold of a seaboard w'inter, these divi- 
sions sweated while others took things 
easy or worked in comfort in heated 
buildings. There was grumbling. 

But with the coming of old-type elec- 
tricity, there was satisfaction. Artists 
and technicians were busy, absorljed in 
their work. They began to catch some- 
thing of Gamble’s vast dream. They 
spent hours working out ideas and prob- 
lems which were child's play to the lead- 
ers, but tremendous strides in viewpoint 
for them. 

After one outbreak in which they were 
badly shocked, the Brooklyn clans set- 
tled down. Prescott noticed their in- 
creasing lethargy. They had been wild 
and strongly tainted with criminal in- 
stinct, but they had been vital. After 
electrotherapy had brought their glands 
in harmony, they became listless, a pas- 
sive group. They were better citizens. 

“But their spark is gone,” Prescott 
said. 

“It w’ill take three or four generations 
of scientific breeding to build up their 
brain capacity,” Gamble said. 

Prescott looked at the men guiding 
the new civilization and was not sure 
the change was worth the cost. They 
were a brilliant lot, these new leaders, 
consumed with scientific zeal. And 
most of them were about as colorful as 
the clothing Gamble had supplied. Pri- 
vately, Prescott was still thrilled by 
swashbuckling pirates. 



124 



ASTOUNDING SCIENCE-FICTION 



THE GREAT catastrophe of the year 
came in the spring. Gamble's big boat 
had been left out. In the spring break-up 
it was crushed, and much valuable equip- 
ment went down with it. But most 
valuable was the motor. Although of a 
radically advanced type, it had been 
made of the finest crucible steel. 

No other steel would do, and it was 
impossible to duplicate without the origi- 
nal workers. 

Gamble sent an expedition across the 
river aboard a scow. They had with 
them his atomic-powered automobile, 
and they were to get through to Pitts- 
burgh and bring back the men who made 
that fine steel. 

Amused, Drega let them through for 
a price. Gamble had to supply him with 
a complete electro-power plant. There 
was no choice, as Drega held several of 
Gamble’s best men hostages. 

Twenty miles past the crude town 
Drega was building, the car broke down 
in the rough country. The expedition 
got out and hiked. Drega found the car, 
dismantled the motor, and used it for 
hoisting. 

Five months later the expedition re- 
turned. They had traversed grimly sav- 
age country, although the rural sections 
seemed to be building farms just as 
those they had laiown. Two of the ex- 
pedition brought back no ears. 

Gamble was livid with outrage. They 
had found the manufacturer who made 
the steel. When they told him about 
the boat, his eyes darkened. 

“Tell Gamble,” he gritted, “that any 
man who managed to bring a boat and 
laboratory safely through what hap- 
pened, can do no business with Pitts- 
burgh.” 

Only fifty percent of the population in 
that district had died. But of the re- 
maining, sixty-one percent were maimed. 

Gamble said, “They don’t under- 
stand.” 

Prescott calmed him. “It will take 
a little time for them to get the signifi- 



cance of this. As soon as they see what 
3'ou arc aiming at. they will fall in line.” 

Prescott was in very good standing 
these days. He was a good outlet valve. 
He blew his nose on a paper handker- 
chief. “By the way, Simon, the new 
presses are almost ready. It will seem 
funny, printing by light, but it makes 
a better looking format. What are we 
going to do for paper?” 

“Minerals,” said Gamble. “It’s quite 
practical.” 

The legitimate excuse to experiment 
with a mineral paper was what had 
motivated Gamble into having the photo- 
presses made for Prescott during these 
busy days. Personally, he considered 
newspapers obsolete. Soon, now, they 
would have television. 

It did not strike him that his rational- 
ization was particularly human. Gamble 
had little sense of humor. 

XVHI. 

TEN YEARS made a tremendous 
change in life under Gamble. The great 
crisis had come in the third year when 
the requirements of work overtaxed all 
possible power supplies. They had har- 
nessed their whole side of the river and 
made the tides work, but still there was 
not enough power. For Gamble wanted 
to do more than simply give back a 
civilization. He wanted to see the new 
civilization working. 

He found himself seriously overbur- 
dened with the transmutation of energy. 
The simple things, catalytic action of sea 
water, increasing the efficiency of en- 
gines, perfecting quality and strength of 
products, these things his division chiefs 
could handle. But the transmutation of 
energy was beyond most. He worked 
with a handful of scientists. 

Now he saw he must take the time 
to teach others. It meant months spent 
instructing men in handling this leashed 
lightning of atomic power. A new gen- 
eration of young atomic-power engineers 



“THREE THOUSAND YEARS!” 



125 



grew up, though. They understood and 
handled Gamble’s mechanisms. 

With the solution of the energy prob- 
lem, Gamble’s civilization had spurted. 
But it had not helped to extend his in- 
fluence. He now controlled Long Island 
and the former five boroughs of Man- 
hattan. He was on friendly terms with 
clans to the north as far as Albany. 
This terminated his influence. 

The new civilization was using plas- 
tics heavily. All clothes were made of 
plastics, many building materials and 
even machines. But the products of 
other climates were missing. Expedi- 
tions had been sent to tropical countries 
with building materials and metals for 
barter and returned empty handed. The 
natives weren’t interested in work. The 
white men who had driven them before 
weren’t interested in the materials of- 
fered. 

Substitutes had been found, but the 
problem of woodpulp grew more serious 
daily. Most of the timber on Gamble’s 
land had been utilized in making plas- 
tics of various kinds. Gamble had satu- 
rated the country to the nortli with iron, 
shovels, plows, crowbars, saws, glass 
and building materials in exchange for 
woodpulp. Now that rural communities 
were beginning to find their feet again, 
they had become shrewd, hard bar- 
gainers. 

There were shrewd and hard bargain- 
ers in Gamble’s clan, but they had not 
shown great interest in their talents. 
What did it get them? They already 
had everything the new civilization had 
to offer. It was not pleasant going up 
into the woods for extended periods of 
trade. They didn’t go. 

GAMBLE himself had made one trip 
consumed with a desire to offer the peo- 
ple the great benefits of his civilization. 
He had almost been lynched three times. 
The people up there had no desire for 
his world of science. They were inter- 
ested, they listened to what was being 



done. A few would have liked radios, 
movies and television machines. But he 
could have gotten more real interest 
with jerks of good old-fashioned tobacco. 

“All I know about you, mister, is 
that you’re making cheap gold and all 
my life savings in insurance aren’t worth 
a split rail !” a venerable hollered. 

“But you don’t need insurance,” 
Gamble explained. “Whatever you 
need, civilization will give you.” 

“It won’t give me back my life sav- 
ings,” the old man insisted. 

Gamble tried another group. “Don’t 
you want the benefits of science?” he 
queried. 

“We’re doing all right,” they said. 
Gamble controlled his exasperation. 
“Here, take a simple case. Wouldn’t 
you like hot and cold water without 
walking to the spring or chopping wood ? 
Just pressing a button !” 

“What’s the sense of that when we 
got the spring and the wood?” asked 
Jed Hawkins. “My old lady ain’t got 
enough to keep her mind off other peo- 
ple’s business the way it is.” 

Gamble returned, nettled and vexed 
by human dumbness. Utter stupidity! 
He couldn’t understand this bullheaded- 
ness. He had lain down in a patch of 
poison ivy and couldn’t treat it until 
his return, which made his mood worse. 

Occasionally, there was intercourse 
with Drega, always- at a staggering cost 
to Gamble. Gamble’s ships were for- 
bidden to land on Drega property ex- 
cept on notice. Those of Drega’s clan 
who wanted could join Gamble’s people, 
but they couldn’t come back. 

At first this had piqued Gamble. But 
slowly he saw that he was winning out. 
There were occasional desertions from 
Drega’s harsh rule. People heard about 
Gamble and wandered in from distant 
places. This pleased him. But it would 
have been better if they had been a dif- 
ferent type. Those who came to stay 
showed a marked tendency toward lazi- 
ness or pseudo-philosophy. Particularly 



126 



ASTOUNDING SCIENCE-FICTION 



those who left Drega. Tliey wanted to 
be honored for having an idea. Gam- 
ble’s people had many ideas as a matter 
of course. 

Gamble had made one attempt to make 
peace with Drega. He had done this in 
spite of personal antipathy and bitter- 
ness. He thought his civilization owed 
it to others to offer them its fruits. The 
answer came back that Drega liked the 
stniggle of old-fashioned existence. 

Gamble learned that Drega had opened 
trade with the whole interior. He had 
clumsy wooden boats in operation, and 
two steel boats were being made at 
Pittsburgh. But the backbone of Dre- 
ga’s trade was whisky. 

Gamble would not stoop to this. But 
it annoyed him to look across the river 
and see a tower of good steel rise into 
a replica of the old Drega tower. 

IT WAS TYPICAL of Drega that 
his tower dominated the Hudson while 
men and women within fifty miles 
starved and went without clothing. But 
it worked. Word went far and wide. 
People began to stream to Drega’s town 
•for trade and celebration. The city 
flourished, and Drega’s influence grew. 
Drega was hampered by Gamble’s work 
in one way: as fast as a new standard 
— platinum — silver — wheat — was se- 

lected, Gamble’s transmutation or trick 
production methods upsat it. Since 
there was no definite yardstick for value 
he had to do much in barter. It an- 
noyed him, but his real interest was the 
cheap labor possible under conditions. 
With cheap labor he could build — build 
endlessly. He was already arranging to 
put through the railroad to the coast 
again. Word had come there still was 
a west coast. It was a thousand miles 
farther away than it had been. 

But all in all. Gamble could be pleased 
on the tenth anniversary of his rule. 
Around him, the city stretched in per- 
fect plan. Broad parks which would 
flower were surveyed. There was r 



stretch down one side of the city where 
airplanes would land. Beneath, there 
would be ground conveyance, beneath 
that, fast freight transportation. 

The city plan was perfect. It began 
with deep mines. The island was a 
mineralogical treasure house. On lower 
levels were refineries and factories. 
There was a general utility level above 
that, such as depots for food, clothing, 
material, theatres, etc. Endless plat- 
forms would eventually carry the people 
along this level. 

Towering above that would be great 
skyscrapers, but of an entirely new de- 
sign and construction and conception. 
Six of them were already built. Not 
perfect, but scientific advancement. For 
one thing, they had no windows. Why 
should they ? They were properly 
lighted and air-conditioned inside. 

It was true that people did not like 
working in them. But that was an 
anachronism — a hangover of memory. 
The new generation would prefer them. 
The one tower of glass which admitted 
natural light. Gamble let Phillips build 
because it pleased him. 

In colonies around the city were small 
apartment houses and private homes. 
Citizens could have whichever they de- 
sired, as quickly as construction could 
take care of them. Gamble had been 
surprised about the choice. In spite of 
every conceivable appliance to make life 
easy, most workers chose apartments. 

He had envisaged a city of comfort- 
able, cozy homes with green lawns, and 
the people spending much of their lei- 
sure time — they worked a twenty hour 
week now — enhancing their gardens. 
Some had done this. Most had let their 
lawns run down. There was a grow- 
ing demand that the city government 
furnish garden and lawn service. It 
was too much work to care for their 
own property. 

Of course, fixing of the city had only 
just begun. Until two years previous, 
the clan had been barely able to keep 



“THREE THOUSAND YEARS!” 



127 



abreast of pressing, basic work. There 
had been keen interest in the future, and 
Gamble had thought his people would 
take great pride in their personal lives. 

BUT THE FIRST radical slash of 
working hours had not brought this ex- 
pected reaction. He could not quite put 
his finger on which glands were respon- 
sible. With ample time, security, all 
the necessities and many luxuries of life 
provided, his people seemed to forget 
progress. They were not even living up 
to their present station. And the new 
arrivals from outside, who had come in 
since the building work was done, were 
not all cooperative. More and more 
now were accepting Gamble’s offer of a 
civilization that gave no pay, no money, 
but ^id not demand any for food, cloth- 
ing or shelter either. 

During the most hectic periods of 
driving work there had been sharp, vital 
debates, a flood of new ideas. People 
had been keen and active and interested 
in life. Some of the most progressive 
ideas, brilliant scientific work, and best 
literature had been written then. 

But now they had leisure, they did 
nothing. Gamble had reports that there 
was even a falling off from movie at- 
tendance, and the television fan mail was 
dropping. The increase for slushy, clap- 
trap entertainment was startling. 

“A matter of orientation,” Prescott 
said. “This older generation has been 
through too much. The younger will 
be able to take hold.” 

Prescott was now in charge of the 
press and news televising. He could 
not get much enthusiasm about the 
newer types of news dissemination. 
There was no way to see what you’d 
done or said after it had happened. It 
wasn’t newsprint. 

Gamble sighed. “Our first ship got 
back from Chile today.” 

"Ah, the nitrates! Now we’ll get 
that iantalectron, eh?” 

Gamble’s eyes fired moodily. “The 



Chileans won't do business with us. I 
sent word that we would send them 
whatever iantalectron they needed as 
soon as production got under way. They 
replied they wouldn’t know what to do 
with it.” 

“That’s Drega fighting you, of 
course,” Prescott said. “Still — it’s 
amazing the number of people who 
would rather starve than be benefited.” 
“It’s getting serious,” Gamble stated. 
“We have a good many minerals here, 
but we need many from outside. We’ve 
consumed all the surface ores left from 
the old city. We need copper, radium, 
oil, chemicals and vanadium. The at- 
oms of some metals are so unstable my 
transmutation woit’t make them. Pitts- 
burgh turned us down on vanadium 
pentoxide again. On the Gulf, it’s a 
serious offense to ship us sulphur.” 

“Of course, you could get it by old- 
fashioned trade,” Prescott offered. 

GAMBLE smashed his hand on a 
plastic table. “That’s exactly what we 
can’t do! We’ve proved the practi- 
cability of a scientific civilization. Now 
we need it on a world basis.” 

He strode around an electrode and 
glared at Prescott. “That coyote, 
Macken, was down from upstate yes- 
terday. He’s got a corner on all the 
jengsen available, and he won’t let it 
go. He’s holding for a market. We 
need that supply for gland stimulation. 
Our people are getting lazy.” 

“What did he say when he saw the 
new city?” 

Gamble became almost unintelligible 
with fury. “He said the old city had 
more skyscrapers and he missed the 
night-clubs and burlesque !” 

“You should have given him an elec- 
tro treatment for generosity and logic.” 
“I did,” Gamble gritted. “I gave him 
enough to kill a man. The old Yankee 
skinflint gave me a pound of blueberry 
cobbler and told me to forget this civili- 



12S 



ASTOUNDING SCIENCE-FICTION 



zation business and come up and go fish- 
ing!" 

“Well, there’s some good news,’’ 
Prescott said. “The ten-year-old class 
in school passed one hundred percent 
in trigonometry.’’ 

“They ought to he doing calculus!” 
Gamble snapped. He collected himself 
with e^ort. “By the way, I’ll have to 
shut down your pajier.’’ 

Prescott licked dry lips. 

“I’m sorry,” Gamble said. “We’re 
short on materials and need that photo- 
electronic equipment for conversion to 
astronomical uses.” 

“But the public ” Prescott 

blurted. 

“Oh, they have television. Newspa- 
pers are really obsolete,” Gamble .said. 

Prescott went back to the one glass 
building and sat looking tlirough the 
single foot-square clear glass window 
which he had secretly brited Phillips 
into installing. Phillips’ one weakness 
was publicit}'. He loved to see his pic- 
ture in the paper. 

Prescott thought, “Maybe I’ve lived 
too long, but I can’t conceive of a 
healthy civilization without a press.” 

XIX. 

PRESCOTT said, “Send Flagherty.” 
He did not have to move. A higlily 
sensitive cell oscillated to his desire to 
see one of the staff and threw the speaker 
open. 

Lucky came in with a bored expres- 
sion. There' wasn’t much news any 
more. All the insane and criminals 
were cured by treatment. There were 
very few accidents. There were no 
fires or explosions. There was no gam- 
bling, or night-club life, or underworld. 

“What’s the late news?” Prescott 
asked. 

“A dog bit a man. They treated the 
dog’s thyroid and inoculated him with 
some mouse serum. Now he’s chasing 
cheeses and running away from cats.” 



“Nothing else ?” 

“Page one headline is that a grave 
error has existed in estimated diameter 
of the Earth’s orbit. It is now estab- 
lished at one thousand thirty-six miles 
short of previous estimates.” 

“Any building news?” 

“Some swell stuff, but you ordered 
not to print it. Phillips has completed 
his final detailed city plan and it’s a 
honey. But it involves the use of a 
numljer of chemicals and minerals we 
haven’t got. Outside of that. Copper 
just ate some crabs, which are off the 
diet, and it upset his metabolic count. 
He got out of control and swiped a 
scow and was heading toward Drega’s.” 
Prescott grinned. “What’s wrong? 
Too much work ?” 

“Not enough. He said the only thing 
he ever really enjoyed was eating and 
sleeping. Now he doesn’t work enough 
to get an appetite, and this formula 
food keeps him so pepped up he doesn’t 
need the sleep. He’s going over where 
the smelter men are sweating nine hours 
a day instead of sitting beside a bunch 
of buttons behind an insulated shield 
for four hours.” 

“Anyone go with him?” 

“Rogers, the police captain. Fed up 
with taking lioodlums to a chemical psy- 
chopathic ward. Anyway, he hadn’t had 
a case in three weeks.” 

Lulu Belle burst in unannounced as 
usual. She said, “I just heard Copper 
went over to Drega’s and I think it’s a 
good idea. I don’t know why I didn’t 
think of it before.” 

Lucky looked at her face and gulped. 
“Hell, honey, what’s wrong here?” 

Lulu Belle swept a hand over a very 
serviceable — and frowzy — looking dress. 
“What’s wrong? I look like a sack of 
potatoes and he asks what’s wrong! 
You can’t get a decent dress in this 
town for love or money. There’s no 
money, and all the men are too dopey 
to be interested in love!” 

“That’s a fine way to talk just wlien 



“THREE THOUSAND YEARS!” 



129 



we’ve decided to get married,” Lucky 
said. 

LULU BELLE took a deep breath 
and said very steadily, “Lucky, I’m not 
marrying you. You’re getting as bad 
as the rest." 

“What rest— whaddya mean?” 

“The men in this damned city. You’re 
not human any more. You sound like 
a calculating machine when you begin 
one of your dazzling conversations. You 
spent four hours last night spouting an 
explanation of what this new elcxzerces 
force is, and how it will improve brain 
capacity. I don’t want to marry a brain, 
Lucky. I want a man. I’m going over 
to Drega’s, too.” She stamped out of 
the room. 

Lucky yelled at the microphone, 
“Gimme Doc Whipple!” The doctor’s 
voice came on and Lucky nervously told 
what Lulu had said. The doctor 
laughed. “We’ll pick her up. Don’t 
worry. Short on vitamin X and a lit- 
tle upset.” 

Prescott was studying Lucky intently. 
“Would you have called the police to 
pick her up in the old days ? Or pad- 
died her little posterior?” 

“Well — — ” Lucky stopped. “You’re 
right. Hell, she’s right, chief!” 

Prescott said, “I still believe in prog- 
ress and the stupidity of our old society. 
But I don’t think this new one is com- 
plete. Something’s missing. Some- 
thing’s wrong when a man as big as 
Gamble ean’t raise enough trust to get 
minerals and chemicals. Um-m-m. And 
photo-electric equipment.” 

Lucky said, “Chief, there’s going to be 
a break. Things happened too quick for 
people to take. And the kids growing 
up can’t take it either. The school sys- 
tem here is perfect. It’s got more 
thought and research poured into it than 
anything else except the power project. 
It’s so perfect these kids are looking a 
hundred years ahead.” 

AST— 9 



Prescott lit a cigar. “What do they 
see?” 

“A twelve-year-old in the graduating 
class at Murray High got up and walked 
out of the room this morning. He said 
he was depressed. They started to give 
him a stomach toner, but he said it 
wasn’t that. He was just thinking that 
in anotlier hundred years there wouldn’t 
be any need for men !” 

Prescott said, “That’s not as far- 
fetched as it sounds.” 

Lucky dropped his voice. “Listen, 
chief, it isn’t far-fetched at all. If we 
were getting the supplies here we need, 
they’d cut the work week to five hours 
tomorrow. They got machines to do 
damned near everything now, except 
think.” 

“Men will always have to do that,” 
Prescott said. 

LUCKY SHOOK his head. “Last 
night I was over at Polatov’s. He had 
a break with Gamble a couple of weeks 
ago, and is living on minimum rations. 
W e’ve been taking him bits of equipment 
and things. Do you know why he had 
the break? Because Gamble wouldn’t 
give him time to work on an automatic 
brain ! Now he’s finished the thing— 
and if zvorks!” 

Prescott muttered, “Good Lord!” 

Lucky nodded. “He isn’t making this 
public. He just wanted to prove an 
automatic brain could direct a mecha- 
nism without outside help. It was a 
cat’s brain and had real cat’s eyes, alive 
in solution and nerves intact. He 
attached it to a static vacuum and let a 
mouse loose. The vacuum chased the 
mouse and caught it!” 

“That would be funny if it wasn’t 
Polatov. In ways he’s greater than 
Gamble.” 

“He’s going to kill this secret. But 
it won’t be long before somebody else 
digs it up. What’s going to happen if 
a bunch of those brains get loose on a 
civilization completely supported and 



130 



ASTOUNDING SCIENCE-FICTION 



controlled by machines?” 

‘‘At least they can’t reproduce.” 

“Unless they get some scientist into 
their power to make them. There are 
a few good scientists in this city who 
would like to help to take Gamble’s 
place. Maybe some of those brains 
would pan out smarter than the man 
who’ made them.” 

Walters, the astronomer, came in 
looking gray and haggard. 

“Good Lord ! Get him a shot of elec- 
tro-stimulant,” Prescott said. 

Walters said, “No more. It’s these 
damned scientific gadgets that wrecked 
me.” He blew his nose. “My wife just, 
ran off with another man. It’s my 
fault.” 

“What are you going to do?” 

“Drega’s offered me a new observa- 
tory they’re building. And” — Walters 
was a teetotaler and he smiled cynically 
— “the equivalent of two thousand cases 
of malt whisky per annum. I under- 
stand that whisky is quite a valuable 
commodity over there.” 

The news ticker announced, “Polatov 
commits suicide. Explodes laboratory. 
Gamble says undoubtedly short on vita- 
min ” 

XX. 

THE CLOSING of the paper marked 
an era in Gamble’s civilization. Long 
after, Prescott wondered whether the 
people actually missed the paper, or 
whether trouble was brewing in any 
event, and he simply fanned it by his 
own uncertainty and troubled state of 
mind. 

Probably Phillips missed the paper 
most. He still appeared often on tele- 
vision. He was constantly in the public 
eye. But he missed the printed page. 
He had been wont, in the privacy of his • 
office, to take out his scrapbook and 
read the most recent stories between 
sieges of intense work. It gratified his 
vanity and stimulated him to new en- 
deavors. 



On the day when Drega’s paper ran 
a two-page story on Phillips’ architec- 
tural mastery and gave details of the 
new city, Phillips began to wonder 
whether Gamble’s civilization was as 
perfect as, say, his own city plans. There 
were annoyances. Phillips was not a 
grasping m£ui, but it had been something 
of a let-down to win the third consecUr 
tive architectural prize and realize there 
was no greater reward than glory. He 
had the reputation and glory to start 
with. 

For that civilization, a very peculiar 
thing happened to Mr. Phillips as he 
read Drega’s glowing account the third 
time. He suddenly thought of the vast 
opportunities for an architect in Drega’s 
world. Here, everything was so nearly 
ordered that any architect could supply 
requirements. But over there— ah, 
there were problems and dangers of 
building! There, it was the old grim 
battle to get a building up, something 
a man could get his teeth into and tussle 
with. 

Phillips realized this was the battle 
urge and that gland 2207 must be over- 
secreting. A second very peculiar thing 
happened. He did not take the required 
gland balancer. He rather enjoyed his 
imaginative thought of danger and diffi- 
culties. 

A month later Phillips went to Dre- 
ga’s. He had let his diet go to the devil 
lately, and he was filled with toxins mak- 
ing him outrageously old-world drunk. 
He was also contented. 

He said to Steig, “I’m sick of perfect 
system. I want some excitement! I 
want to know again that a crummy 
architect may get my job because some- 
body likes him. I want to see my build- 
ing going up with bum materials and 
have the sport of getting them by the 
building inspectors. I want to fight to 
get materials ahead of some prior order, 
and scheme to get some city ordinance 
overlooked.” 

Steig said, “You’re sick, Phillips.” 



“THREE THOUSAND YEARS!” 



131 



But his own mind began to work. “It 
is sort of quiet around here, though. 
Gosli ! I remember back in the old 
Stevens plant it was so noisy you had 
to yell. One day I miscalculated a cyl- 
inder expansion on a test model and it 
damned near blew the plant up.” 

He never miscalculated now. He had 
a machine to do his calculating for him. 

Phillips said, “Well, I’m leaving. I 
hope Gamble understands.” 

“He’ll make a case study of your 
diet,” said Steig sourly. “That’s all it 
will mean to him.” Steig was silent a 
moment, then abruptly, feeling like a 
runaway boy, “I’m going with you.” 

BUT THESE were scattered cases, 
unnoticed in the ponderous onward 
march of that highly geared civilization. 
The men’s brains were missed — not the 
men. 

During the.se days, serious supply 
problems kept Gamble at his laboratory 
in search of substitutes. If he had l)een 
out he might have heard and worked 
out a scientific solution. But even in his 
laboratory, certain monthly figures 
might have told him something was 
amiss. 

The birth rate was up thirty percent 
from the previous year, and seventy per- 
cent from five years before. This was 
not due to family desire. It was due to 
sheer boredom. There was no longer 
danger and stimulus to life. The public 
was fed up with itself. There was 
plenty of amusement — which the public 
did not attend very heavily. And there 
was a growing clamor against Gamble. 
What did he expect them to do with 
their time? He should provide some- 
thing to stimulate their desires ! 

Gamble had thought that, with the 
reduction of lower scale work, the peo- 
ple would turn to more play and relaxa- 
tion and study to climb into the upper 
brackets. But not all men are born with 
the desire to climb into upper brackets. 
Many simply wish some work they can 



do well and keep occupied. Others — 
many such had come — want only to be 
fed. 

The laborers were always squawking 
on principle, of course, but it was the 
artisan who first felt fear of the new 
eivilization. Forge men sat on comfort- 
able seats and watched iron elaw's and 
mechanical contrivances do their w'ork 
for them. The plastic molders put three- 
dimensional photographs in a frame and 
smoked while the product was being 
molded. Rumplemeyer sat in a glass 
turret of a vast glass faetory and touched 
levers and buttons whieh ran the entire 
place. There were three other men on 
his shift. Two of them never saw a bit 
of the material or product ! 

“Salter would not have liked this,” 
Rumplemeyer grumbled. “How can 
you know a product is good when you 
don’t handle it?” 

The product was good, but his 
thought was sound. The civilization be- 
hind the product was crumbling be- 
cause men did not have a personal in- 
terest left. Men grew subconsciously 
Jealous of these machines which had 
stolen their work. Hazily, they felt that 
perhaps Man was not born not to strug- 
gle. They felt the importance of being 
important. What did they mean here? 
They were not even important to them- 
selves. 

IT WAS a small thing which brought 
matters to a climax. Four consecutive 
months the production of the colored 
enamelware had been thrown out of 
kilter by unexplainable demand for the 
product. All production was on a basis 
of a careful study of public needs. But 
in this one item, the surplus had been 
wiped out and there was a clamor for 
all the enamelware available. 

An investigation disclosed that Ross, 
the city comptroller, was hoarding. This 
brought out that he was holding five 
additional jobs, under various names, 
and using the credits of those jobs for 



132 



ASTOUNDING SCIENCE-FICTION 



his peculiar acquisition. He had no use 
for the hoarded treasures; the product 
was not even valuable. Yet he was 
working eighteen hours daily to support 
his quirk. 

He was an invaluable man, and every 
effort was put into his glandular treat- 
ment. His diet was changed. He was 
treated with short waves. He was 
cured. 

But somehow — his brilliance was 
gone. He still did a good job, but his 
genius for probing out unsolved prob- 
lems had disappeared. They had taken 
away his stimulus in life. Ross was 
smart enough to realize what had hap- 
pened and to resent it. 

In the big laboratory which crouched 
above the city, those were hectic days 
with vital supplies reaching an end. 
Tension was high, and in controversy 
Gamble snapped at a small fault of 
Ross’. 

It was Ross who gave Lucky the story 
of the terrible shortage of sulphur and 
vanadium which was driving Gamble’s 
civilization into veritable bankruptcy. 
Sulphur for acid — vanadium for cata- 
lysts and special steels. It would be a 
terrible bankruptcy for those who de- 
pended upon Gamble’s civilization, for 
it would fall like a knife, unexpected. 
And upon the breaking down of a sin- 
gle unit of that complex machine, the 
whole structure would tumble. 

Nor was there any way of borrowing 
for these people. Gamble was accused 
of having broken down the economic 
systems of the world. Outside of his 
own territory he was hated. None who 
lived under him could expect compas- 
sion or help from people who were still 
struggling for bare existence. 

Lucky, galled by another outburst 
from Lulu Belle, broke the story in 
screaming, dramatic headlines over the 
televisor that night. He spoke only of 
the shortage faced by the nation. But 
the people concentrated their fear and 
hatred on Gamble. 



It was recalled that once before this 
man had nearly wrecked the world with 
his talk of cheap gold and clieap wheat. 
Word leaked out from the cold, abstract 
theoreticians that he was responsible 
for the world’s suspension in time. The 
masses had only vaguely sus]>ected that 
— had half thought that, possibly fore- 
seeing what was going to happen, he 
had simply protected himself. 

Wild with the frenzied fear of peo- 
ple who can no longer stand alone, they 
rushed to his laboratories, thirsty for 
his blood. Not that he had given them 
this something-for-notliing world, but 
that his failure was taking it away — 
that was in their minds. 

GAMBLE could have protected him- 
self, beaten them into submission by cut- 
ting off their food supply and touching 
the city’s master switch. But he was 
not wise in the ways of human nature. 
He still believed in cold logic. He went 
down to meet the people and explain. 

They would have ripped him to 
shreds, had it not been for Prescott. 
Every one of them had lost people dear 
to them while they went on living. They 
were shouting it against him now. But 
Prescott knew human nature and the 
power of tradition. There were no 
courts in this new civilization, only hos- 
pitals and clinics. Yet the masses still 
had respect for the old laws. 

“A trial,” Prescott called upon the 
mob. “He is entitled to it under the 
Constitution !” 

There was a pause in the mob’s heat. 
“Get Drega!” Prescott snapped softly 
at Lucky. Then mob hysteria blazed 
up again, blazed doubly high as the arti- 
ficial controls of the body toxins were 
smashed through. 

Drega got there as the mock trial was 
almost at an end. He roughly pushed 
a path through the crowd and mounted 
the seat of knowledge. 

“I will be judge,” Drega roared. 
“This will be a trial by jury — you, citi- 



“THREE THOUSAND YEARS!” 



;;cns, are the jury. Van Wyke, take 
Ganibie’s defense.” 

The crowd was heaten and bullied 
and overridden by the builder. They 
feared him now more than ever before. 
He was strong and lean and healthy, 
lie glowed with a fierce animal spirit 
they had almost lost. Here was the 
man they had not followed. But he had 
survived, and across the river he had 
reared a city greater than theirs. True, 
it was not comparable in scientific ways. 
But neither was he faced with extermi- 
nation because of the needs of that sci- 
ence. 

‘.‘By what right do you condemn this 
man?” Dre^a asked. 

They could not hold Gamble respon- 
sible for a civilization of their own mak- 
ing. They picked the older charge, the 
guilt of throwing mankind into sus- 
pended animation and the millions of 
deaths which had resulted. 

It was a grave, gruesome charge and 
the arguments ran high into the night. 
Van Wyke waited until the opposition 
made it clear that they accused Gamble 
of mass murder. 

“Where,” asked the jurist in a quiet 
voice, “are the corpora delicti ?” 

There was a moment of silence, then 
an enraged outburst from those who 
would hang Gamble. The bodies had 
disintegrated, of course, in three thou- 
sand years ! 

Van Wyke gave forth an eloquent de- 
fense. How could a man be accused of 
murder of people who would not exist 
if they had lived normally? Suppose 
the world had gone ahead without sus- 
pension of life. Would any of these 
called murdered be alive today? “He 
killed no one — instead, he gave you life 
three thousand years beyond your time !” 
Van Wyke thundered. 

“That’s legal side-stepping!” some- 
body called. 

Van Wyke said, “I^w is law. This 
is deeper than the life or death of one 



X33 

man. This reaches the very roots of 
civilization !” 

Drega called out, “Will you commit 
mob murder or give this man his 
rights ?” 

IT TOOK all night and much more 
talk for that decision which gave Gam- 
ble his freedom. He had raised many 
to mighty power in the sciences, many 
who were jealous and would have liked 
to see him gone. At sunrise, an emo- 
tionally exhausted people gave him his 
freedom and turned home. But first, 
Drega promised to take them into his 
community. 

Drega and V^an Wyke took Gamble 
home. He was a tired and disillusioned 
man. Without thinking, he ate a chicken 
leg and drank some milk Drega offered 
him, his first normal food in many years. 

“How have you done so well with 
nothing, and I so badly with so much?” 
he asked Drega. 

“Well, Simon,” Drega admitted, “we 
haven’t done so well. In fact, if some- 
one doesn’t straighten out some elec- 
trical technicalities for us, and give us 
a chemical to fight the locusts, the whole 
country’s liable to be in your boots.” 

“Oh, locusts,” Gamble said reminis- 
cently. “There was that gold gas we 
perfected once, but it was too e.xpensive. 
We have plenty of gold if you want it.” 

Drega said, “We might buy it, but 
you don’t use money, do you?” 

“What is your money now that gold 
is gone?” 

Drega grinned and winked at Van 
Wyke. “It’s a little embarrassing. We 
haven’t decided yet. I’ve simply issued 
‘prods’ — promises to pay something 
when a monetary base is decided. It’s 
rather difficult to find one wjth you 
transmuting all over the map, slashing 
working hours and skyrocketing produc- 
tion.” 

“You might set man’s mental output 
as the base,” Gamble suggested absently. 



134 



ASTOUNDING SCIENCE-FICTION 



He was too tired to be angry any 
longer. 

Drega said, “Well, that would be all 
right, but I have no output myself. 
Now if I had you to represent my capi- 
tal so I could pay my debts ” 

Gamble suddenly came awake and 
stared at this man who had been both 
his greatest friend and most bitter en- 
emy. Well, why not? Apparently peo- 
ple did not know what to do with com- 
plete freedom from responsibility when 
they got it. He, who had given them 
so much, had nearly been slaughtered. 
Drega, who would sweat them to death, 
got their respect. Or at least their fear 
and obedience. 

Gamble nodded a bit unhappily. “All 
right, Vincent. I guess my attempt at 
progress was a great failure.” 

Drega signalled for a bottle and 
clapped him on the sheulder. “Simon, 
it was the gesture of the ages! It saved 
the world from itself. We can have 
progress now. We can really build — 
together I” 

HE SCRATCHED his chin reflec- 
tively. “By the way, that sulphur, vana- 
dium and sulphate you wanted is all 
waiting over at Bayonne.” 

Gamble said, “How did you know?” 
Drega grinned, “It was my agents 



who wouldn’t give it to you.” 

Ganible chortled into his mug of 
whiskey. Scientifically speaking, Drega 
was an exceedingly great sinner, God 
bless him I 

Drega spoke again. “That jengsen 
you wanted is also over at Bayonne.” 
Gamble said, “How *did you get it? 
I offered him any kind of barter and 
he turned me down.” 

“He wanted too much,” Drega said. 
“We thought in the interests of the peo- 
ple we just better take it. I’m not cer- 
tain of the details. I believe he m.ade 
it a bit difficult. But he was defeating 
the inalienable rights of the people to 
pursue happiness or something.” 

Van Wyke said piously, “God rest 
his soul!” 

“Of course, we’ll have to thrash out 
our views on money,” Drega was saying. 

But Gamble was already lost in 
thoughts of locusts and the great things 
to be done. Running the world was a 
full time job in itself. And a disagree- 
able one. It interfered considerably with 
more important work, the work of prog- 
ress. 

Lulu Belle was saying to Lucky, 
“Well, you’ll have to find something 
that’s as valuable as gold was. I’m not 
going to wear a bottle of whiskey for 
a wedding ring.” 



THE END. 



One of the year’s best novelettes 

“Rule 18” 

by CUfford D. Simak 



Coming next month 



135 



IN TIMES TO COME 

THE cover next month is going to be rather unique — a spaceship cover, but 
definitely different. It illustrates a nev/ story by one of the oldest and greatest favor- 
ites — Ray Cummings. "Voyage 13", and a yarn that merits the cover. 

EVERY editor eyes joyfully an outstandingly good story coming from a brand new 
contributor. I thought, for a while, I had one, though it did seem too darned good a 
yarn to be done by a completely new man. Clifford D. Simak. It took a little whilei 
to place the name — then I remembered. It's been a long time since Astounding 
heard from him — six years. But his story then was good, and his new yam is even 
better. His story. Rule Eighteen, is, I think, one of the oustanding novelettes of the 
year. 

OUR other novelette is another of Ross Rocklynne's interesting problem yarns. 
This one — The Man and the Mirror — gives as interesting and sound a physical 
problem as did his Jupiter Trap and The Center of Gravity. 

BUT I can't name all the stories. There'll be the conclusion of Jack Williamson's 
Legion of Time — perhaps the best of the three parts. Kent Casey of Flarebaek 
and Sfafie is back with a yarn Good Old Brig! That's told with the reality for which 
Casey has shown a unique ability. Raymond Z. Gallun, Warner van Lome and 
Clifton B. Kruse will be there too. And L. Sprague de Camp has an article — a totally 
different kind of article on an interesting and unusual subject, told in an amusing way. 

The Editor. 



THE ANALYTICAL LABORATORY— APRIL ISSUE 


1. Three Thousand Yearsl 


Thomas Calvert McClary 


2. The Faithful 


Lester del Rey I 


3. Jason Sows Again 


Arthur J. Burks 


4. Hyperpilosity 


L Sprague deCamp 


5. Iszt — Earthman 


Raymond Z. Gallun 


The first four places were hotly contested all month. At month's-end. Three 
Thousand Years! was only 8% ahead of Hyperpilosity— and Hyperpilosity had 
but one dissenting vote! And — again a new-comer ranks among the highest. 



136 



Witnesses of 

THE Past 



by 

Willy Ley 

A science article about animals that, living today, are 
almost-unchanged representatives of species that have 
changed unrecognizably in intervening geologic ages. 



T he level plain stretched beyond 
the horizon. It was like a gi- 
gantic carpet of high, green grass 
with an irregular pattern of bushes and 
occasional small forests. A small river 
wound its way across the plain, coming 
from the mountains in the north. When 
the sun shone brightly, the waters of the 
river were pure and clean. But occa- 
sionally, especially during the rainy sea- 
son, it was of a reddish color. Then the 
river carried a large volume of water 
and with it countless tons of particles 
tom from the Terra rossa of the moun- 
tains in the north. In places the river 
had dug a canyon in the soft ground. 

Two giraffes suddenly rose from the 
cluster of underbrush and approached 
the trees of one of the small forests. The 
voices of monkeys protested furiously, 
but they neither disturbed the giraffes 
nor the grazing herds of zebralike ani- 
mals and antelopes. A couple of large 
hyenas moved silently through the high 
grass ; they knew that one of the numer- 
ous elephants was dying somewhere in 
solemn loneliness. 

Suddenly they stopped. There was 
a smell in the air they did not like. They 
began racing with the wind that had 
brought this smell to their nostrils. Al- 



most simultaneously the other animals 
began to show signs of nervousness. 
Wide-open nostrils probed the air, then 
the ground vibrated under the clatter 
of galloping hoofs. Hordes of elephants 
with four tusks came thundering along, 
wild hogs, giraffes, antelopes, zebras and 
wild horses. There were large animals 
looking somewhat like giraffes, but with 
a short neck and with forelegs not quite 
as long as those of their long-necked 
cousins. 

All these animals were racing away 
from a smell — a smell that told them 
that the grass was burning. They raced 
away from the flames. Some were 
caught, but not many. The others ar- 
rived at the river, in furious haste they 
crossed it and were safe. But a large 
herd had arrived where the river 
formed a canyon. It was not a large 
canyon, but too wide to jump across. 
There was no time to climb down the 
steep banks ; others were pressing from 
behind. The animals jumped and died; 
the river buried them 

Seven million years later men came. 
They named the river Megalorhevma; 
they called the remains of the mountains 
by the name of Pentelikon and they 
founded a village near the river and 



WITNESSES OF THE PAST 



137 



called it Pikcrmi. Again, many years 
later, other men came to this coimtry 
which they called Greece and began 
digging for ancient bones in the bed of 
the ancient river. Among the animals 
they found there, a type of short-necked 
giraffe abounded. They named it Hel- 



it was a large variety of antelope, but 
when the animal was actually discovered 
(in 1900) zoologists were utterly sur- 
prised. This “new” animal which the 
Negroes had called Ndumbe proved to 
be a short-necked cousin of the giraffe, 
related to Helladotherium and Samo- 




The OKAPI: a survival of a past geologic age. Related to the more 
“modernized" giraffe, this zebralike animal is directly linked to the long- 
extinct Helladotherium and Samotherium. The ears are large — but they 
work. The animal is shy, and extremely alert. Living in a particularly 
inaccessible part of Africa, it is difficult to reach the country, much more 
difficult to approach the animal. This alertness and shyness are, probably, 
part of the reason for the continued survival of this witness of long-gone 
geologic eras. 



ladotheriuni, the “Mammal from Hel- 
las”. 

Again, a few decades later, explorers 
came hack from Africa. They brought 
pieces of skin with them which they 
had traded from the natives. The skin 
looked similar to zebra skin, but it 
was decidedly not the skin of a zebra. 
The natives claimed to know the animal 
that furnished this type of skin. It was, 
they said, large and extremely shy, and 
lived in places almost inaccessible to the 
white man. At first it was believed that 



therium that lived in Greece at the be- 
ginning of the Pliocene period. 

Okapi became the name for this liv- 
ing animal from the Tertiary period, 
and thus a new name was added to the 
growing list of “living fossils” — the most 
interesting and most fascinating list of 
animals known. 

Ten years after the discovery of okapi, 
an expedition led by Adolph Frederic, 
Duke of Mecklenburg, investigated its 
habitat and found a landscape surpris- 
ingly similar to the Pliocene landscape 




138 



ASTOUNDING SCIENCE-FICTION 



reconstructed by paleontologists and 
based on the fossil beds near Pikermi. 
It was actually a “Lost World” that ex- 
isted almost untouched in Inner Africa. 

THE DISCOVERY of the okapi 
came at a time when science was not 
only used to the thought of survivors 
from former geological periods, but actu- 
ally welcomed discoveries of this type. 
This attitude was then comparatively 
novel. In fact, matters had been very- 
much different before the publication of 
Charles Darwin’s “Origin of Species” 
in 1856. Some of the then-known liv- 
ing fossils were decidedly shunned by 
bewildered scientists who did not know 
what to think of them. At that time, 
the “system” of the Swedish scientist 
Karl von Linne prevailed. It divided 
all living beings into two “kingdoms” — 
animal and plant life. The animal king- 
dom was divided into vertebrate and in- 
vertebrate. The latter are those without 
a backbone — clams, squids, starfish, 
cockroaches, butterflies and the like. The 
vertebrate animals have a backbone and 
ribs, usually a skull and legs of some 
sort. They were divided into the 
classes of Fishes, Amphibians, Reptiles, 
Birds and Mammals. The whole sys- 
tem was nothing but a classification of 
creation — unfortunately governed by the 
dogma that living forms never change. 

The system itself was very helpful ; it 
was the dogma attached to it that caused 
worries. Furthermore, Linne knew 
nothing of extinct animals and had not 
provided for them. For a number .of 
years things worked out nicely. Then 
discoveries of extinct animals were re- 
ported in quantities ; Cuvier in Paris 
started his work. Still it did not bother 
zoologists very much; they simply did 
not care about the extinct monstrosities. 
Trouble began when living fossils — this 
term was invented many years later — 
were brought to the attention of the 
zoological masters. The most important 
one of these annoying animals, “set 



across the path of the scientific method 
to show its worthlessness” (as Lesson 
wrote in 1839) was the platypus from 
New South Wales. Platypus proved to 
be not only annoying; it simply was 
Zoological Nuisance No. 1. 

It came from a continent that had sep- 
arated from the rest of the world about 
fifty million years before herds of mam- 
mals found their graveyard in the Me- 
galorhevma River near Pikermi. Con- 
sequently, the animals of this continent 
were infinitely stranger than those of 
primeval Greece. A zoologist of the 
year 1800, if presented with an okapi, 
would have had no difficulty in placing 
if in the system. But Dr. George Shaw 
of the British Museum did not know 
what to say about the animal, the skin 
of which he had received from Australia. 
This was in 1798. One >year earlier 
platypus had been discovered — “water 
mole” it had been termed, a name still 
surviving in Australian vernacular. 

Shaw had a hard time to convince 
himself that this animal was real ; a 
harder job to convince others followed. 

, Platypus did not seem real. Further- 
more its skin had arrived with a ship 
that had sailed the Indian Ocean and 
these ships usually brought strange 
pieces of Unnatural History. “Jenny 
Hanivers” came with them, skates and 
rays skillfully “operated” upon and 
dried as to resemble sea-monsters and 
dragons. “Eastern Mermaids” came, 
fore-parts of monkeys sewn to hind- 
parts of large fish. Platypus looked like 
one of these impositions, with its queer 
broad bill on a body looking somewhat 
like a small beaver. Careful study con- 
vinced Shaw that the animal was no im- 
position. He had to recognize it, and 
gave the scientific name of Platypus 
anatinus. Soon afterwards it was found 
that “platypus” was not permissible as 
a generic name, it having been used in 
1793 by Herbst for a genus of beetles. 
Meanwhile the German Blumenbach, 
who had also received a skin from 



WITNESSES OF THE PAST 



139 



Austrlia, had called it Ornithorhynchns 
paradoxus. The latter name is still in 
use, although Ornitliorliynchus anatinus 
is recognized now as official and correct. 

Both descriptions, based only on skins, 
necessarily omitted the features that 
made platypus so famous and caused a 



very day nobody knows with any de- 
gree of certainty why the males are thus 
equipped. 

IT WAS the anatomist. Home, who 
made the bewilderment of his colleagues 
about this animal from far off Australia 




PLATYPUS : the greatest annoyance to zoological science ever discovered. 
Origin of headaches among naturalists for a generation, it absolutely re- 
fused to fit into any existing category. It had fur like a mammal, laid eggs 
like a reptile, had webbed feet and a bill like a duck, and no discernible 
mammary glands. Its tail is mammalian, and its habits reptilian. It thor- 
oughly and completely confused naturalists. Their first reaction was to 
put it down as a bad dream, for its skin (which was the first appearance) 
came on the same ships, from the same regions, that produced “mermaids” 
and similar miraculous crosses between monkey skins and fish tails. Cer- 
tainly platypus seems to be constructed in Nature’s spare-parts department. 
For years, the more they learned about the beast, the worse confusion became. 



controversy lasting almost a century. 
Shaw mentioned that the hind legs 
showed six digits, the sixth resembling 
a spur. He did not know then that it 
zvas a spur, that this spur is connected 
with a special and mysterious gland, that 
only the males have the spur, that it 
causes extremely painful and even 
dangerous wounds, and that up to this 



complete. He discovered that the female 
lacked uterus, mammary glands and nip- 
ples. He found that the oviducts, in- 
stead of uniting to form an uterus as it 
is customary with mammals, opened 
separately into a cloaca as if the animal 
w'ere a bird or a reptile ! 

Up to the time that Home published 
his report, zoologists had contented 



140 



ASTOUNDING SCIENCE-FICTION 



themselves in declaring the platypus a 
somewhat queerly built mammal. Now, 
with mammary glands, nipples, uterus 
and all the other things that make a 
mammal what it is missing, they wished 
fervently that it had never been found 
alive. They were almost ready to be- 
lieve Sir John Jamison’s statement: 
"The female is oviparous and lives in 
burrows in the ground.’’ But then the 
majority of scientists decided that such 
a belief would be blasphemous. One 
could not admit the existence of a bird 
with four legs and a fur. They felt re- 
lieved when the German, Meckel, finally 
discovered the mammary glands; they 
had been overlooked because they are 
large only periodically. 

Meckel’s discovery, however, greatly 
upset the theories formed and advanced 
by the two French scientists Geoffrey 
Saint-Hilaire, father and son. The Saint 
Hilaires insisted that a special class be 
created in the system for platypus and 
possible relatives, and did not like mam- 
mary glands because this brought their 
pet animal back to the mammals. There- 
fore the younger Saint Hilaire declared 
that the glands must be scent glands and 
asked Meckel, maliciously, how he ex- 
pected the billed young platypi to suckle 
milk from glands that did not even have 
teats! Meckel was right, however; the 
glands were actually milk glands. No- 
body could guess that the mother is lying 
on her back when the young ones are 
feeding. Since nobody could make this 
guess, the Saint Hilaires did not get a 
good answer at all and felt elated. They 
loved the persistent reports from Aus- 
tralia that platypus lays eggs. They 
even published pictures of these eggs. 
Unfortunately, drawing and reproduc- 
tion were so excellent that experts could 
classify them as tortoise eggs without 
any difficulty. 

Meanwhile Darwin’s first book ap- 
peared on the market, and even if it did 
not at once convince the majority of the 
learned world, its theories were consid- 



ered by everybody. They could ex- 
plain the mystery of platypus. Darwin 
claimed that the mammals had once 
evolved from the reptiles. Platypus ap- 
parently demonstrated how the “transi- 
tion stage animals’’ had looked. The fur 
and many other things were already 
mammalian ; the cloaca an<l other fea- 
tures, including the egg laying habit — if 
true — were still reptilian. 

The egg laying remained an uncer- 
tainty until 1884 when two scientists. 
Dr. W. H. Caldwell of Austrlia and 
Professor Dr. Wilhelm Haacke of Ger- 
many, verified the early reports. Both 
found unhatched eggs in the pouches of 
females. Curiously enough, they made 
their discoveries independently within 
the same week without knowing of each 
other and announced their discoveries 
the same day in two different places ! 

While the scientific battle about platy- 
pus, its life habits, its classification and 
its significance was still raging, Aus- 
tralia yielded another zoological nui- 
sance. 

It began harmlessly enough with a 
question asked of Gerard Krefft, cura- 
tor of the Museum of Sydney, by one 
William Forster who had lived for many 
years on a farm near the Burnett River. 
Forster asked about a certain large fish. 
Krefft told him that he had never heard 
of it, and Forster assured the curator 
that he would “get him some”. His 
cousin, who still lived on the farm, 
caught a few of these fish and sent them 
to Sydney, preserved as well as possible 
with much salt in a sturdy barrel, 

GERARD KREFFT opened the bar- 
rel and spread the “new fish” on the 
dissection table. It was about five feet 
long, looking in general like a big, fat 
eel of greenish color, with large scales. 
Unlike real cels, it had four strong and 
powerful paddlelike fins and a tail which 
was unlike any other fish tail ever seen. 
The scientists had names for them be- 
cause they existed in theory. The term 



WITNESSES OF THE PAST 



141 



for the paddlclike fin was Archipferyg- 
itan Gegenbauri, while the tail was a 
(liphyceral tail. It would need a book to 
explain the full significance of these 
terms. As an approach to the full mean- 
ing, it may be said that Professor Ge- 
genbaur’s theoretical archipterygium 
represents the most primitive fin possi- 
ble, having a skeleton resembling the 
structure of a fern leaf, while a 
diphyceral tail is no tail at all but sim- 
ply a rim of fin material around the end 
of the spine. 

This was surprising enough, but more 
was to come. Krefft opened the mouth 
of the fish and looked at its teeth. What 
he saw made him feel as if he had acci- 
dentally touched a Leyden battery. 
(There were no high tension wires in 
1869 when this happened.) Teeth of 
this type were known, but only in a fos- 
silized state. The great Agassiz him- 
self had named them; ceratodus he had 
termed the fish to which they once be- 
longed. It had been uncertain what type 
of fish the ceratodi had been — possibly 
sharks it was thought, possibly some- 
thing else. They were something else. 
Krefft had the opportunity to find out. 
He dissected the fish. If he had still 
been capable of feeling surprise, he 
would have felt it again. The fish had 
gills as all other fish have. But in addi- 
tion he had a lung! 

Two lung-fish were already known at 
that time. One had been discovered in 
1833 by the Austrian collector Johann 
Natterer in South America ; it had been 
termed Lepidosiren. A few years later 
a cousin of Lepidosiren was found in the 
White Nile, the name became Protop- 
ierus. Both had lungs with which they 
breathed if they were forced to live in 
foul water. And both survived the dry 
season in a state.of suspended animation 
in round mud-cakes. These mud-cakes 
can be shipped by mail without extra 
precautions except waterproof wrapping 
paper. When the package arrives at its 
destination, the mud-cake is placed in 



lukewarm water, and a few minutes later 
a healthy — and also hungry — lung-fish 
emerges. 

The new Australian lung-fish — Krefft 
termed it Ceratodus forsteri, later the 
names Epiceratodus and Neoceratodus 
were used to distinguish the living form 
from the extinct ceratodi — surpassed the 
two others from the Amazon River and 
from the White Nile. Not only in size, 
but also in age. Ceratodus was a r«al 
survivor from periods even older than 
the origin of the mammals. 

There exists a rule that the individual 
development of an animal reenacts in 
somewhat shortened form the evolution 
of the species. Everybody interested in 
paleontology and evolution was eager to 
know what material could be gathered 
from Ceratodus’ individual development. 
Professor Ernst von Haeckel, of the 
University of Jena, was especially eager 
to know it, for he was not only the 
fiercest warrior of evolutionary ideas, 
but also an emphatic defender of the 
rule mentioned. Australian scientists 
were much too slow — in his opinion — to 
furnish the data desired, and so he 
dispatched one of his pupils. Professor 
Richard Semon, to Australia. 

Semon's e.xpedition, successful as it 
eventually w'as, is a novel in itself. He 
arrived in Australia in August 1891. At 
first he was directed to the wrong place. 
He did not find Ceratodus there, but 
was lucky enough to get more reliable 
information and to correct a few minor 
mistakes made by Krefft. Then he went 
farther inland and established himself 
many miles from the nearest settlement, 
directly on the shores of the Burnett 
River, and waited for ceratodi to come, 
and ter lay eggs. Ceratodus did not ar- 
rive so quickly, but a human visitor, 
Professor Spencer from Melbourne, 
came. He was going to spend his vaca- 
tion on research. The objective of this 
research? Oh, he just wanted to find 
out something about the individual de- 
velopment of Ceratodus. Dr. Caldwell 



142 



ASTOUNDING SCIENCE-FICTION 



(the same who had discovered that 
platypus actually lays eggs) did not have 
enough time ; he had only found that the 
fish places its eggs on the stalks of greens 
growing in the river. 

The two professors shook hands and 
tried to work together peacefully. But 



of .science they caused, had caught the 
fish and tried to satisfy their proverbially 
insatiable appetites with the meat. Se- 
men lost his temper and began to shout. 
The next morning he discovered that he 
was alone in the wilderness ; the natives 
had simply disappeared. Then the rainy 




CERATODUS : the Australian Lunghsh. Australia’s second triumph of 
zoological confusion. About five feet long, it resembles a fat eel, which is 
all right, but it also has paddlelike fins and a tail that’s all wrong. It isn’t 
a fish-tail, and it certainly isn’t an eel-tail. Furthermore, the best way of 
shipping the fish alive is to dry it out in a cake of mud and keep water 
away. An African relative sadly confused naturalists who tried to catch 
it alive and transport it from its native lake in a tub of water. The fish 
invariably drowned. Natives showed how it could be done; carry the fish 
in a wicker basket and they live comfortably. Caked in dried mud, the 
lungfish have an incredible vitality. They survive a concentration of 
metabolic poisons accumulating in the blood so great that a tenth or 
twentieth of the concentration would be almost instantly fatal to any 

normal creature. 



there was nothing with which to work. 
No Ceratodus, no eggs. Spencer at last 
had to go back to Melbourne ; Semon 
stayed on. A full month after Spencer’s 
departure, a few eggs were found, Se- 
mon began to work. The greens of the 
river were thoroughly inyestigated, but 
suddenly the supply of eggs stopped. 
The natives, unaware of the frustration 



season began and Semon knew that he 
had to wait for a full year. 

Everything seemed wrong. No re- 
sults, rainy season, vacation almost, and 
funds completely, exhausted. He began 
to send telegrams to Europe. The re- 
quested funds were granted, the re- 
quested extension of vacation also. But 
he was still in a very gloomy mood when 




WITNESSES OF THE PAST 



143 



he went to Thursday Island to use the 
time at his disposal to make a number of 
less important observations and studies. 
Hardly more cheerful, be returned to his 
camp, determined to finish the work re- 
gardless of a malevolent fate. 

Suddenly everything went well. Cera- 
todi came and laid eggs in large quan- 
tities ; natives obeyed orders even if they 
did not understand them completely ; 
friends and colleagues took care of the 
young Ceratodus, preserved them in al- 
cohol at the various stages of develop- 
ment, and shipped them to Jena after 
Semon had left Australia. Working on 
these specimens, the evolution of Cera- 
todus, the mysterious survivor from a 
forgotten age, could be traced, and sci- 
ence received a clear picture of how 
aquatic life had developed into land 
forms hundreds of millions of years ago. 

NEW ZEALAND, separated from 
Australia by the Tasman Sea, could 
never hope to compete with the fifth 
continent, if it were not the home coun- 
try of a very strange lizard. Although 
it seems as if New Zealand was sep- 
arated from the rest of the vr'orld a little 
earlier than Australia, it preserved 
neither lung-fish nor platypus. There is 
a strange, wingless bird living in the 
forests, the kiwi, and a tiny crab in its 
mountain lakes which is also a survivor 
from the age of reptiles. Otherwise, 
there is no primeval fauna to be found. 
Once, when mysterious tracks in the 
snow covering one of its numerous 
mountainsides were found, scientists had 
some hope of discovering a surviving 
primeval bird, a veritable Archaeopteryx. 
None less than Charles Darwin himself 
urged explorers and settlers to be watch- 
ful for such a rare specimen. But noth- 
ing was ever heard again of these 
tracks arid of the animal that caused 
them. 

Still, New Zealand is one of the im- 
portant countries for surviving witnesses 
of the past or, rather, for one of them. 



On some tiny, rocky cliffs near the South 
Island there lives a lizard about two feet 
in length. It is of dirty olive-green 
color, and does not look very extraor- 
dinary on first sight. Only its compara- 
tively large head and eyes make it some- 
what conspicuous to the casual observer. 

But when this animal was dissected 
, for the first time by a skilled anatomist, 
he felt something that could only be com- 
pared to the emotions felt hy Krefft 
when Ceratodus was under his knife. 
This lizard, called Tuatera by the na- 
tives and Hatteria by the scientists 
(Sphenodon is now the official name) of- 
fered an anatomical puzzle that needed 
quite. some time for solution. 

In general build, it was a lizard. But 
there were several anatomical features 
that, looked upon separately, made it a 
snake. Then a few facts were discov- 
ered that made it look like a turtle. Some 
reminded of crocodiles, and some even 
faintly suggested birds. Although it was 
not most important, it was most conspic- 
uous that this lizard showed a remark- 
able development of the third eye. 
Rather, its third eye was much less atro- 
phied than the third eye of other ani- 
mals known at that time. (Later equally, 
or even better preserved, third eyes were 
discovered in the skulls of the Galapagos 
leguans, and of a small, footless lizard 
living in Germany, the so-called Blind- 
schleiche . ) 

If these discoveries had been made 
fifty years earlier than they were, 
they would have angered the scientist 
who made them. As matters were, 
everybody who saw them was excited. 
“There is a real saurian alive on the 
cliffs of New Zealand,” the reports said. 
“Not one of a large size to impress our 
emotions, but one of so incredible an 
age as to stir our imagination. This 
seemingly Unimportant little lizard is not 
only a saurian in the usual meaning of 
the word, but it is an ancestor of sauri- 
ans. It is actually a survivor of a group 
of reptiles that formed apparently the 



144 



ASTOUNDING SCIENCE-FICTION 



root group of all other reptiles during 
the period known as the Permian.” 

Tins was really big news, but later 
some of the enthusiasm had to be can- 
celled and a few of the statements had 
to be withdrawn. Sphcnodon is actually 



left. It is true, however, that Sphcnodon 
saw Earth’s history since the beginning 
of the age of reptiles, and that it actu- 
ally belongs to the ancestors of some 
very impressive extinct saurians, among 
them the plesiosaurs that were such an 




SPHENODON : New Zealand’s contribution to the list of zoological head- 
aches. Sphenodon represents a period far more remote from the proper 
period of Platypus or the Okapi even, than those two are from us. This 
drab lizard has maintained itself against changing, hostile environment 
without great change since the dawn of the Age of Reptiles. As a result, 
it combines the parent traits from which sprang differing lines of evolution. 
It has, in consequence, characteristics that reminded naturalists of snakes. 
On the other hand, in some ways it is turtlelike. Also, it has resemblances 
to the crocodiles, while certain formations suggest the bird family. 
Sphenodon is zoological hash — a sort of unrefined ore of animal character- 
istics from which evolution gradually split off specialized reptilians and, 

later, the bird family. 



a surviving member of the rhyncho- 
ccphalia, an extremely old group of the 
reptiles. They are, however, not the 
most ancient group as had been be- 
lieved. This glory goes to the Cotylo- 
saurians of^ which there is no survivor 



outstanding group of marine life of the 
Jurassic and Cretaceous periods. 

THE QUESTION is permissible as 
to which one of the living fossils is the 
oldest. This record does not go to the 



WITNESSES OF THE PAST 



145 



lung-fish, as one might think, but to the 
sharks. They are known from ge- 
ological periods so ancient tha* their age 
represents a staggering number of mil- 
lions of years. Still, they are not the 
oldest. There are animals that lived 
even before the famous “armored fish” 
of the Devonian period, long before the 
first sharks made their appearance. The 
animal that might claim the record to 
be the oldest — at least one of the oldest 
— living fossil is the horeshoe crab 
(Limulus) of the Atlantic coast of North 
America. 

One has only to look at it to feel that 
it does not belong in our time. It has 
only one pair of feelers (all real crabs 
have several pairs), it has a strange 
u,rmor and an even stranger sting. There 
is cojrper in its blue blood and there are 
no mandibles forming its mouth. Sev- 
eral pairs of legs conveniently located 



near the mouth hole do the work of 
shredding the food. If one is lucky 
enough to see a young horseshoe crab, 
one can almost believe he is seeing a 
living trilobite. There must be a direct 
and very close relationship between 
Limulus and the ancient trilobites. Some- 
where behind the Carboniferous period, 
limuli, trilobites, insects, arachnids and 
centipeds merge with the crabs of today. 
It is disputed when, where and how, but 
there is no doubt that they all have a 
common ancestor. And Limulus must 
be relatively close to this ancestor. In 
fact, Limulus is, in one way, the most 
astonishing .of all the living fossils. 
Okapi, Hatteria, Ccratodus, Platypus 
and all the marsupials survived in “lost 
worlds” of some sort. But Limulus 
managed to avoid all mutations for hun- 
dreds of millions of years in the open 
sea! 



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“The Submarine Mystery” 

IN THE JUNE ISSUE OF 

ymkix 

EVERY MONTH— TEN CENTS 



AST— 10 



MARS 

Our second astronomical color-plate cover came this month because Manly Wade 
Wellman's story Men Against The Stars offered so perfect an opportunity for such 
an illustration. Very probably the first men to reach Mars will, in fact, make a landing 
on Diemos. From that vantage point, accurate mapping photographs of Mars may 
be made, using powerful telescopic lenses rather than true telescopes. For Mars is 
but 30,000 miles away. 

And perhaps they will establish^ there on Diemos, a sort of base-camp. Tons of 
fuel, food and oxygen supplies might be deposited there to be picked up on the home- 
ward trip, avoiding the necessity of dragging them up against Mars' gravity. 

I thought first of having this color-plate illustrate Mars as seen from Phobos, the 
inner satellite. But not all of Mars is visible from Phobos! The tiny moon is so close 
to its primary that the curve of Mars' bulk hides the polar regions. So we chose 
Diemos as our point of vantage. 

Those are not mountains in the foreground; they are bare, jagged rock. Diemos 
has no horizon, in the accepted sense. The little world is far too tiny (diameter 10 to 
15 miles) to have sufficient gravitational pull to force rock into a rounded ball. In- 
stead, it is probably a mass of gaunt, crystalline rock, dazzling where sunlight strikes 
the right angle, black as space in the shadow. But not black rock. Few rocks are 
black. Wesso has shown splashes of color — perhaps a vein of copper or cobalt or 
nickel salts staining the duller silicates brilliant red or blue or green. A trace of a 
chromium compound would give out a blazing color — and practically any color from 
deep red to brilliant violet. Or metallic gold might be present. Surely, with the 
immense variety of brilliant-hued minerals, there's no reason to suppose that Diemos 
must be entirely drab and colorless. 

Mars itself is shown at late spring in the southern hemisphere. The northern pole- 
cap is still rather small, but glistening white with the accumulated hoar-frost building 
rapidly in the late fall weather. The vegetation of the northern regions is sear anoT 
brown, invisible against the red rust of the planet. The southern vegetation is spring-< 
ing and spreading. The long day has started at the southern pole, making it the 
garden spot of the planet, warmed by continuous, though dilute, sunlight. 

And Phobos, the inner satellite, is visible in the picture. It is shown In near-correct 
magnitude, exaggerated only slightly — and exaggerated at that, to be visible at all. 
It is on a line with the equatorial region of the planet, directly between the A of 
Astounding and the small, printed legend below. That is a more-than-adequat« 
representation of the light of one of the famous "twin moons of Mars"! 





T here’s a heap o’ satisfaction for a man, when his 
son grows up with a lot o’ the same tastes his Dad 
has. That just doubles a man’s pleasure in fishin’, or 
huntin’ . s : or smokin’ a pipe. 

, And, speakin’ o’ pipes, the number o’ sons who take 
after their Dads in likin’ Union Leader Tobacco would 
be amazin’, if you didn’t know that Union Leader’s 
been givin’ men the biggest tobacco value a dime can 
buy . . . for more than 30 years. Many a young man, 
who chooses mellow Union Leader, is simply provin’ 
his “Old Man” had a lot o’ sense. 



Like Father , like Son 
and Both like Union Leader 



(/nmiea^ 

THE GREAT AMERICAN SMO 



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CIGARETTE 

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Please mention this magazine when answering advertisements 



148 




Astronomical covers and Evolution, 

Dear Mr. Campbell : 

You want to know what we. the readers, think 
of the new idea in covers so here goes. The 
picture of the Sun ns seen from Mercury is a 
splendid improvement over the old type. Peo- 
ple not familiar with hie magazine are apt to 
smile when they see the covers showing fantas- 
tic being.s an<i machine.^. Probably they are re- 
minded of the pseudo-science comic strips. 

As to the cover picture : 1 know uo one on 
Mercury would look at the Sun with the naked 
eyes or through clear glass, but if one looked 
through glass dark enough to see the sun-spots, 
as shown, would the corona be visible? But I 
suspect you have considered this and believe 
it likely that prominences of the height showm 
could be seen. 

Am glad to hear you are going to continue 
this type of cover. A view of the Earth as seen 
from the Moon should be a fascinating picture. 
It might show the Earth illuminated half with 
sunlight and half wdth moonlight, wdth the glare 
of the Sun reflected from the surface of an 
ocean and the reflection of the hall-moon on an- 
other ocean, if it could be seen. The white of 
snow would show in the polar regions ami in 
the winter hemisphere, also, perhaps on moun- 
tain ranges in the summer hemisphere. Maybe 
there should be a slight difference in color be- 
Iw’een forest, desert and cultivated regions. Part 
of the surface would be ol>scured by clouds. 
The Earth as seen from space must be* the most 
interesting object in the JSolar System because 
of its fH'eans. clouds and seasonal changes. 

Saturn as seen from one of its satellites should 
be a good subject, and how about some lunar 
scenery in its probable real colors? The Moon 
is one of the most-pictured extra-terrestrial ob- 
jects. but after all, it is Ihe olo.sest and the 
easiest to examine and will be the first landing 
place for space travelers. My impression is that 
the apparent uniformity of color on the Moon 
i.s due to the conditions under w'hicli we see it. 
Yesterday it was cloudy here but we could see 



the snow-covered Sierra Nevada Range sixty 
miles away illuminated w'ith bright sunlight. It 
had a silvery brightness curiously like a lunar 
landscape as seen through a telescope. Tlu're 
w'as the same lack of variety in coloring, yet in 
the mountains there is great contrast between 
the snow aud light-gray granite and the green 
of the trees (pine, fir, cedar, etc.) and the 
dark, volcanic rock. 

One more suggestion and a leap from a near 
view’point to one immensely remote. Would it 
be possible to picture tlie galaxy as seen from 
the outside? But I doubt that astronomers have 
yet accumulated enough iuformatiou to form a 
basis for such a picture. 

For the sake of variety I’ll enclose a brickliat 
or tw'o. Burks’ “Fatal Quadrant*’ included a 
number of things I thought needed e.xplainiiig. 
Wlien the keystone is blasted out to “bring a 
mountain crashing dowMi” where does it fall to? 
Are mountains suppo.sed to have empty space 
under them like stone arches? The lost people 
W'ere “taken suddenly- — when the ice got them 
— they were cauglit just as they stood— -not iu 
twisted attitudes at all”. Ice (or water) com- 
ing s-uddenly would w'rcck buildings, to put it 
mildly, not to mention the cfTects on the people. 
Elsewhere, it is stated that the ice accumulated 
very slow'ly. 

Unless I’m much mislnken explorers have not 
deciphered the bicrogly^»hics of ancient races in 
Africa and Yucatan wMthnut trouble, as stated. 
They have done it through long years of h.ml 
w’ork and sometimes with incomplete and not 
too satisfactory results. 

.Tohn 1>. Clark’s leltor on the future evolution 
of man was good. At the risk of offering myself 
as a target for Ihe “unlimiled quantities of <le- 
structive criticism’. 1 will offer a few com- 
ments. This picture of the larger, stronger 
men of the future is more cheerful than ttie 
usual idea of (hem as feeble-bodied and balloon- 
headed. But why say they will be only Gt-j or 
7 feet tall in 1,000,000 years? He give.s (he 
small size of the armor in the museums as his 
evidence that men w'ere smaller when it was 



SCIENCE DISCUSSIONS 



149 



made. I have read that the two largest collec- 
tions of armor j» the world include only one 
euit that would lit a six foot man so that’s all 
right. But if the average height of a man has 
increased appreciably — say only one inch — in 
COG years, what will it be in 1,000,000 years 
which is 2.000 times 500? Yea, verily, there 
tcill be giants in those, days! 

Another point ; Isn’t it very likely that if 
Man becomes able to “know the universe aroumi 
him without the intervention of other senses” 
— develops what Dr. Rhine calls ESP or extra- 
sensory perception — that those other senses will 
decline? In that case, Man will have less effi- 
cient eyes than at present, or may have merely 
vestigial remnants of them. ESP would not be 
hindiu’od by lack of light, intervening objects, 
apparently not by distance, and one would not 
have to turn liis head or focus his eyes. If such 
a sense ever becomes generally efficient, eyes will 
almost fall out of use as awkward and compara- 
tively useless organs of perception. 

Mr. Togue verbally thumps Eando Binder for 
making the statement : “When you decrease the 
speed (of an object), energy is again expended.” 
In most practical instances isn’t that true? It 
take.s energy to apply the brakes on a locomotive 
to avoid hitting a cow, or to run the engines 
of a steamer in reverse to avoid smashing into 
a wharf. If a rocket-ship fires its forward rock- 
ets to slow up, energy is being used just as 
surely as when it fires rear rockets to speed up. 

The length of this letter is a surprise to me 
but if you don't have time to read it I won’t be 

^surprised. I won't blame you either D. R. 

Cummins, 221 J Street, Sacramento, Calif. 



"To the biologists: Please stay away. 

We're having a hne time now," per- 
haps? 

Dear Mr. Campbell : 

Will you permit me to entertain a few doubts 
about Mr. McCann’s ideas on human evolution? 
His argument with Dr. Clark, presented in the 
April issue (backed by that of Mr. Reinsberg) 
sei'ins to be centering around “deadly slow”, 
which, one gathers from Dr. Clark, is such a 
rate that periods of the order of a million 
years must elapse before marked change is no- 
ticed. Mr. McCann, on the other hand, main- 
tains that for man. changes will occur in a 
much shorter time — but fails to give any definite 
rate. A thousand or ten thousand years for 
appreciable change, Mr. McCann? Or a hun- 
dred ? 

The McCann arguments for the faster rate 
involve -two points. In a single paragraph — if 
not in one breath — he “suspects” the age of 
B. ereotus and then “holds” that the rate of 
evolution of a type speeds up as the type grows 
older. Whether this is true or not I don’t 
know. I am no more of a biologist than is 
Mr. McCann. But I do “suspect” it until we 
are shown some reference that is at least semi- 
authoritative. The McCann Law (if we may 
call it that), while it may not be entirely false, 
is certainly not stated completely. We have 
only to look about us and observe his saurians 
which, “once they were under way .... 
changed .... and varied with astonishing 
rapidity . . Today the saurians are even 
older than they were in those bewildering times 
and accordingly we would expect even more 
rapid development. If there is any relation be- 
tween rate of evolution and age of type, it can- 
not be that stated in McCann’s Law — granting, 
of eourse. the correctness of his data on the 
rapidity of saurian evolution during their prime. 

Mr. McCann’s second point is that man’s 
self-made environment will act as an accelerator, 
and he even brings in financial motivation for 
evolution by pointing out that the “ambiops” 



who can move and use his eyes independently 
of each other will be a more valuable workman, 
that extra dollars in his pay envelope will lead 
toward the perpetuation of this variation if it 
occurs. Now it has always seemed to me that 
our much maligned present-day environment is 
not any more pressing on the species than those 
of the past. Humanity has changed very little 
in six thousand years, and during all that time 
man has been confronted by environment, eco- 
nomic systems and emergencies but little less 
efficient than our own in giving us the “relent- 
less, unceasing squeeze”. Mr. McCann may 
quote statistics on the increase of nervous 
breakdown and heart failure, but we will still 
doubt — ^for can he give us any data on the 
prevalence of those disorders in Rome. Athena 
or Babylon? With the assurance that the diag- 
noses were as correct as those of today? 

We can imagine other developments of man’s 
senses and powers than those upon which Mr, 
McCann puts such a premium for continued exist- 
ence in our age, developments which would be 
just as useful in past times. A hairy gentleman 
with a large club and a small brain who could 
see down into the far infra-red would have a 
great advantage over his fellows in that he 
would not be blind on a cloudy moonless night. 
A shorter reaction time would have been as 
valuable to the old-timer in jumping out of the 
path of a drunkefi prince’s chariot as it would 
be to our modern pedestrian who has the advan- 
tage of a traffic signal system. An ambi<lexter 
should have some of the advantages of the 
“ambiops” if he could control each hand simul- 
taneously, but is there a noticeable premium put 
upon his services in industry? 

Then again there is the delicate question — 
what is evolution? Things like the increasing 
height of certain peoples, their increasing longev- 
ity — are they to be called evolution, or merely 
changes due to better diet or more exact medical 
knowledge, reversible and controllable within 
certain limits by variation of those factors? 
This preferred individual in the McCann doc- 
trine, with his shorter reaction time, his super- 
movable eyes and his taxed-to*the-utmost abilities 
— is he a true evolution product? Is evolution 
the sum of a series of such small changes, or 
does it also need a different, more drastic type 
of change? In other words, are such small 
modifications mutations? 

It seems to me that the McCann thesis, while 
it may conceivably be correct, has no proofs. 
Since he has freely admitted already that he 
has no proofs we have come a long way with 
no gain. But in addition to having no proofs 
it seems most improbable, since the things he 
is expecting to hasten evolution have been with 
us for some thousands of years with no appre- 
ciable effect. This brackets his shortening of 
Dr. Clark’s “deadly slow” process to between 
five thousand and, say, half a million years, 
which I maintain is still “deadly slow”. 

One thing may show up within the next hun- 
dread years, however. When mice are irradiated 
with X-rays in certain doses there is produced an 
effect on the chromosomes which may not show 
up for several generations — when the progeny 
start appearing with certain parts missing, jaw- 
bones or legs or what-not. During the past 
generation or two, people in considerable num- 
bers have been working with, or exposed to, 
X-rays and radioactive radiations. More re- 
cently quite a few have been sprayed with 
neutrons and various amounts of a remarkable 
assortment of atomic debris. What effects may 
show up in the next few generations? 

I certainly appreciate the McCann lapse into 
biology. One would hardly think of bringing any 
attack against him in his home ground of 
physics and chemistry. This evolution-of-man 
stuff should provide plenty of room for nice, 
high-sounding, unprovable arguments. At least 
until some biologist strolls in and points out 
that none of us knows what he’s talking about. 
Even that won’t be too bad. We’ve all admitted 
it already. — Robert D. Swisher, 1.5 Ledyard Road, 
Winchester, Mass. 



150 



ASTOUNDING SCIENCE-FICTION 



Natural "law" represents best present 
belief. 

Dear Mr. Campbell : 

In reading the letters from various contribu- 
tors to Science Discussions as well as JJrass 
Tacks, I find most of them laboring under a 
terrific delusion. They seem to think that if 
any author defies a natural law or statement 
laid down by some scientist it is no less than 
sacrilege. It is nothing of the kind. 

The true scientist regards no laws as being 
immutable or indestructible. They are only bis 
tools — possible explanations of certain natural 
phenomena. The scientist has no reverence for 
his theories: he merely clings to them until he 
can find better and more suitable ones. Just 
because a certain John Dalton developed an 
atomic theory is no reason that there actually 
is such a thing as an atom. If conditions 

should appear which proved unexidninable by 
the atomic theory, it would immediately be 
nbvandoncd for another theory. It is the same 
with our Solar System. It is not definitely 
known that the Earth revolves around the Sun. 
It is only the most logical hypothesis we can 
think of. Ill one way the scientist is lazy — he 
usually takes the easier way out of things. 

How'ever, I do not mean that all previous 
theories may be discarded with the wind like 
80 much trash. If in a story any theory should 
be contradicted, there must be a logical, 
plausible explanation for it. By this I do not 
mean the nonsensical rambtings of certain 
tboiigUt-variaut wizards (Yes, I mean you, Mr. 
Fearn). Most of them do not know a parsec 
from a positron. 

Well, I hope I have given someone a little 
food for thought. — Edward Ludwig. G14 West 
11th Street, Tracy, California. 



Negative — energy electrons^old “effier"? 
Dear Mr. Campbell : 

Since every one with a smattering of physics 
realizes that It is impossible to perfect inter- 
planetary communication under the present 
hypotheses of that science, it is probably a sin- 
ful waste of time to read your excellent maga- 
zine — but I greatly enjoy it. Especially “Galac- 
tic Patrol,” although there were a few incidents 
unfathomable, like getting next to a ship that 
had its shields up. 

It strikes me that your authors, physics being 
what it is. would welcome any new theory which 
would let them get into space without singeing 
their tails. Yet most of them appear to base 
on physics from Newton to, Einstein, and do 
not attempt to forecast future logical develop- 
ments. I. myself, had only high school physics 
fourteen years ago, still I think I can help them 
out with what we shall call the “Bimte-Hayden- 
Dirac” theory. Let's go ! 

Dirac surmised an infinitely dense web of 
negative-energy electrons, 1 understand, which 
we can never see nor sense as such. (This 
bring.s echoes to my mind of the equally all- 
pervading luminiferous ether, with w'hich we 
used to have so much trouble.) I theorize that 
this web of negative-energy electrons is actually 
the ancient “ether”. To be sure, the ether theory 
supposed that the liiininiferoiis media was ex- 
tremely tenuous. I claim that it would have to 
be dense, because waves travel faster in a denser 
medium ; i.e., sound travels faster in iron than 
in air. Also, an electro magnetic vibration may 
have equal facility of travel although the energy 
levels are inversed. Cosmic rays are doubtless 
a by-product of change in light energy from one 
level to the other. Heaviside and other layers 
represent changes in energy levels. 

Having raised plenty static with the ether, 
we now attend to (he chief bugaboo of inter- 
planetarians — gravity. In an infinitely dense 

and all-pervasive medium, how would independ- 
ent bodies of a higher energy level react? 
Would they not be somewhat spherical, as a 



bubble rising through water? Moreover, the 
units furthest removed from the levels of nega- 
tive energy would seek (he center, the elemenU 
with lower energy levels — that is, with fewer 
electrons — would seek the top. Of course, this 
presupposes that the inward push of the in- 
finitely dense web is the force of gravity. 

Well, I could go on adducing reasons; but 
here is enough for the boys to shoot at. Here’s 
hoping that it's sufficiently iUiiminating, and 
gives the boys something to think about besides 
Atlantis. — Marshall J. Hayden, Oil yierra St., 
Reno, Nevada. 



Maybe the machines he uses and not Man 
himself will do all the evolving. 

Fellow Hatchet Tossers : 

And Arthur McCann In particular. I beg to 
differ with the present evolutionary concepts. 
Swivel eyes are a nice Idea, but I doubt that 
man will get them naturally. In fact, it seems 
to me that man is stopping his evolution by 
those same machines you talk of. They are 
taking his place in the evolutionary process to 
such a degree that man’s only natural change 
will be a subdued tendency toward longer fingers 
the better to work with. 

Man’s greatest progress will come through 
his effort to perfect his present evolutionary 
state as bis ideal \ 

When will everyone find out about escape 
velocity ? 

To Paul Gaumond who so nicely criticizes 
Frank Bochick j 

How do you reconcile your statement that 
light generated on a body moving faster than 
light would not trail behind the body, with 
J. J. liOgue's quotation “the speed of light is 
a constant 180,000 m.p.s. regardless of the 
speed of the source”? 

As for you Mr. Logue, what a lot you had 
to learn to get boozled so beautifully ! Sound 
has a constant speed which varies as the 
medium and the temperature. Why not light? 
All our deductions so far have been fine reason- 
ing from earth-bound facts done for us by a 
few people who could reason and did. Knowl- 
edge is power; Intelligence is the ability to use 
it. Schools now do too much learning in propor- 
tion to the amount of reasoning power Induced. 
When we get our first observations in wide-open 
space we may learn something. 

As a parting evolutionary idea : perhaps far 
back in the past a race died out due to the fact 
that all their progeny were mutants — the new 
human being. And — we may be subject to the 
same disaster ! — Dale Tarr, R. R. 2, Cloverdale. 
lud. 



Suppose we use both time and space 
travel stories? 

Dear Mr. Campbell : 

Why can't w'e have more serials written as 
well as “Jason Sows Again.” Although I have 
been a constant reader of your magazine for 
about five years, I have never had the pleasure 
to read a aerial that appeals to me so much as 
this one. Let’s have more such stories by- 
Arthur J. Burks. 

The best short-story in your April issue was 
“Matter is Conserved”, although “The Faithful” 
ran it a close second. “Three Thousand Years!” 
is fair, but I have read better. “Izzt — Earth- 
man” and “Negative Space” were very well 
written, and supported by well chosen plots. 
I enjoyed them very much. How about cutting 
down on the space-travel stories, and ])utting 
time-travel stories In their place? I think most 
of the readers would agree with me if the ques- 
tion were put up to them. 

I am putting the following in. in case this 
letter is published. I would like to correspond 
with readers of this magazine who live in the 
U. S. and Foreign countries. — William Wyatt 
Bell. 71C North 25th Street, Paducah, Kentucky. 



SCIENCE DISCUSSIONS 



151 



Concussion ratber than Discussion? 

Dear Editor : 

It wa» with considerablo' surprise anO some 
apprehension that I noted the rather uproarious 
cmerKeuee of Brass Tacks fmm its well merited 
banishment to the Umbo of obsolescence. Such 
a department could ami should be of inestimable 
value as a Hyinposium of the opinions and 
preferences of your renders — if all readers could 
be persuaded to present their mental reactions 
as opinions rather than pearls of wisdom from 
the treasure house of omniscience. Brass Tacks, 
for some time previous to its banishment con- 
tained more stritlence than science, more concus- 
sion than discussion. It was about as interest- 
ing and instructive as a cacayhonous wrangle 
between a covey of quail and a flock of crows; 
the quail perpetually interrogating ‘’But why? 
But why? But why?” : and the crows raucously 
“Because ! Because ! Because !“ And Us short 
sojourn in the editorial hoosegow appears to 
have improved neither its temperament nor its 
techniQue. One of the most forensioally ferocious 
Brass Tackers yet heard from, in the February 
issue, horrilied a palpitating world with the 
devastating announcement that 09% of all 
science-fiction stories appear to be addressed to 
the mentality of high-sehool freshmen ! The 
gentleman seems not to admire “the frosh”. He 
must be a sophomore. That would account for 
his vast mental superiority. I remember when, 
some forty years ago, from a lofty perch atop 
my Sophomorcan Tower of Babel, I smiled sar- 
donically down upon a drab and mediocre world; 
and 1 marveled that human evolutionary devel- 
opment had, as yet, produced but one pre- 
eminently perfect mind. 

And then, in the March issue, come the Gold 
Dust Twins of Jacksonville, Florida, endeavor- 
ing to house-clean scieuce-lictioii by expurgating 
one of its most illustrious contributors. They 
projected a double-barreled hurricane of vitupera- 
tion, redolent with the aroma of decay from the 
everglades and laden with sour superlatives and 
other verbnl debris, in the general direction of 
Dr. E. E. Hniith and his phenomenal Boy Scout, 
Kimball Kinnison. The havoc wrought among 
indignant bystanders was terrific; but the ultra-, 
perceptive Kim met the approaching storm with 
ever-ready DeLameters blazing. There was a 
puff of exploding gases, an indescribable stench 
of burning putrescence; then nothing remained 
save a tiny whorl of superheated air and a few 
turgid epithets such as “idiotic” and “insane” 
lying scattered about. Only an imaginary line 
divides insanity from genius ; and our two 
Floridan Don Quixotes lack the imagination to 
discern that line. 

“Impo.ssible” is a word which should be ex- 
punged from the lexicon of progressive thought, 
we may say that certain eventualities appear, 
to our very limited intelligence, to be impossible. 
But to go beyond that is both illogical and 
vainglorious. The human mind, in its present 
state of development, is incapable of discerning 

f irimary verities. The birth and growth of our 
nfant sciences have proved this again and 
again. Millions of human beings through thou- 
sands of years witnessed the daily revolution of 
Sun and stars about a stationary Earth. Noth- 
ing could have appeared to them more impossible 
and absurd than to deny this self-evident fact. 
Yet Copernicus denitMl it ; and for nearly 400 
years we have accepted and reiterated his denial. 
The Ptolinaic theory of the universe, which ap- 
pears ludicrous to us, survived the tests of 
scientifre research for centuries longer than has 
any other astronomical hypothesis. One of the 
first and greatest of the ancient philosophers 
declared that the noblest achievement of human 
intelligence is to know that we know nothing. 
And his reasoning still prevails. Centuries later 
R most profound logician evoked a masterly 
sequence of deductions in an endeavor to prove 
that we do know something. His fundamental 
proposition, upon which rests the entire struc- 
ture, has become almost an axiom : “I think ; 

therefore I am.” But how about this premise? 
Do I think? Do I know that thought originates 
in my mind? Do I know that I have a mind? 
May I not be merely an Insensate medium 
through which a living stream of thought passes 
and momentarily illuminates with the glory of 
its passing? 

What wonder that space-exploring star- 





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beams twinkle with cosmic mirth as, probing 
speculfttively within the solar atom, they find 
the fiubmicroscopic vermin infesting an obscure 
electron quarreling acrimoniously among them- 
selves as each proclaimj^ his fatuous laws for 
governing the conduct of giant suns in farflung 
galaxies. 

“Vive la bagatelle !“ — A. S, McEckron, P. O. 
Box 217, Galva, Kansas. 



Velocity of tight is aot absolute-^but it 
is constant. 

Dear SUr ; 

In answer to Mr. Renner’s contention about 
light in the March issue, I should like to give 
my opinion. 

I believe a perusal of the texts written by 
any of the better known physicists would re- 
veal the fact that the speed of light is at»so- 
lute — in fact, according to Einstein, it is the 
only absolute thing iu the universe. Alt other 
motion is relative. This is giMierally accepted 
by physicists. Therefore, light could not pos- 
sibly have a sjieed greater than its measured 
velocity — 186,000 miles per second, approxi- 
mately. (However, it can have a lower speed 
when retarded by a medium such as the atmos- 
phere.) 

The change in frequency of light takes place 
independently of it.s velocity — velocity ami fre- 
quency are two different things. As evidence 
of this, we know that all electromagnetic radia- 
tion has the same velocity in space. 

Mr. Renner said, “Such light must have the 
speed of the object which emits it added to its 
own speed.” But we do not know the speed 
of the object — except relative to the Earth or 
some other body. On the other hand, we do 
know the speed of light — and it is an ahanlute 
speed . — William M. Wooding, 208 Piedmont St„ 
Waterbury, Conn. 



The mass-increase effect multipties the 
rest-mass of the thing considered. The 
mass at light-speed is multiplied by 
inSnity — hence normally equals infinity. 
But light cannot be at rest, hence has 
zero rest-mass. Zero times inffnity is 
indeterminate — may be anything. 

Dear Mr. Campbell : 

Isaac Asinion's letter in the December issue 
was very interesting, but in Ids problem he over- 
looked another of Einstein’s statements — one 
which throw's a new light on the problom. 

Asimon states that, according to Einstein’s 
law of mass-increase in proportion to speeil, the 
mass of a beam of light should be inlitdte. If 
the mass were infinite, the inertia would be in- 
finite also. Therefore, no conceivable force 
could stop the beam of light. Yet a piece of 
tissue paper can stop a beam of light. He then 
asks for an explanation of this imradox. 

What Isaac has overlooked Is Einstein’s state- 
ment that space is warped by the presence of 
mass. This statement disproves Einstein’s law 
that a body traveling at the speed of light 
would have infinite mass. Or perhaps, vice 
versa. Eor if both statements were true, there 
would be no such thing us radiation. As soon 
as a body emitted a photon, this photon, hav- 
ing mass and traveling at the speed of light, 
w'ould attain infinite mass immediately. This 
mass would warp space completely around it- 
self and would vanish from our space-time into 
oiif* of its own. 

Now. radiation does nothing of the kind. 
Therefore, one of the two statements is false. 
The question is. which one? 

As for the light and the moving object con- 
troversy, I say there would be no light (that Is, 
light visible to the naked eye). Due to the 
Doppler-Fizeau effect, (he light emitted from 
an object moving at the speed of light would 
i»e shifted clear out of the visible spectrum. — 
George U. Hilt, 1002 S. 21st. Lafayette, Indiana, 

when answering advertisements 




153 




Do readers want an occasional fantasy 
hke **Wings of the Storm**? 

Dear Mr. Campbell: 

.All right! Hold on to your hat! Here comes 
my monthly windy comment on the March issue ! 

As I tripped lightly down the street my mind 
hummed a merry tune. “ ^Cause why?” "Cause 
it was the third Wednesday !” The newsstand 
loomed on the horizon, and, upon reaching it, I 
came to a full stop and rubbed my eyes; what 
was that 1 saw— Astounding SCIENCE-FIC- 
TION? Something wrong there. It didn’t sound 
right. But, upon diving on the copy, I found 
it was true ! Astounding Science-Fiction I The 
new title is nice, but I feel as though an old 
friend has died. However, as long as the rest 
is the same, I have no grievance. 

Well, let’s see ; the logical thing to do is to 

to start with the cover Ow 1 is all I can 

say. Please, Editor, keep Wesso off the covers. 
His first couple weren’t so bad, and this one did 
seem a little better after I had read the story, 
but still, W'e want more Brown. Also, we want 
more figures in the covers. Something like the 
ones for "The Incredible Invasion” and for *T 
Am Not God.” 

I think I’ll deviate from the usual routine 
now and discuss the interior illustrations next. 
My next statement will probably shock a lot of 
people, but here goes : Let’s have less Wesso 
and more Dold ! I’ll admit that Wesso’s good, 
but I think there are a lot of people who prefer 
Dold, Schneeman, and Binder. But don’t, of 
course, eliminate Wesso ; just cut him down a 
bit. 

Maybe it’s just because I was in a science- 
fiction frame of mind, but I really enjoyed 
"Something from Jupiter” immensely. Or maybe 
it was because, for once, we had a story in which 
interplanetary travel wasn’t just an everyday 
occurrence. Anyway, it was out of the usual 
run, and I enjoyed it. 

"Flight of the Dawn Star” had rather a — 
fthall we say — rehashed plot, but it was written 
in such a beautiful and wistful manner that I 
was held in a spell until the very last word. 

Oh, readers, how can you toss brickbats when 
there’s nothing to toss them at? What I just 
said about the "rehashed plot” has no more con- 
viction behind it than a scientist has in saying 
that the Moon is made out of green cheese. And 
when I speak about "The Master Shall Not 
Die”, words fail me. I have fondly placed it in 
my long list of classics which have appeared in 
Astounding. 

Now we come to "A Duel in the Space Lanes”. 
As I said last month, it’s nice to get a good 
old interplanetary story among a host of thought- 
variants, and this one takes the cake, or — 
wait a minute — it would take it were it not 
for Kent Gasey's "Flareback”. Now there is 
something ! When I first glanced at this story, 
I saw the caption “ — by a new author with a 
new style — ”, so I immediately looked, and my 
eye foil upon "and make sure no big, bad, 
Xiranians bite him after he’s through chewing 
the fat. Wotta life! Wotta life!” Oh-oh, I 
said, this is going to be awful ! A minute later 
I was rolling with laughter at the witticisms 
of Dr. Von Thiel and his companion-in-arms. 
More by this author, by all means. 

I won’t comment upon "Jason Sows Again” 
until it concludes next month — this so I won’t 
go off on the wrong steer. 

Now Mr. Cnmi)bell ! How could you publish a 
monstrosity like "Wings of the Storm”? We 
do not want weird tales in Astounding. It was 
KO unreal and absurd that I weep juat to think 
of it! 

"Martyrs Don’t Mind Dying” had its good 
points, but the plot was positively mouldy. 

It’s not my jcustom to criticize articles, but 
I found the series by Willey (or is it Willy?) 
Ley so interesting that I had to put in a word 
of praise. 

Van Lome scores again! "Vibratory” was, 
in mine ’umhle opinion, a masterpiece, although 
greatly (and when I say that I mean it) in 




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need of a sequel. So come on, Warner, don’t 
keep us in suspense ! 

“E.ve of the Past” was nothing to cheer about, 
but it has a warm place in my heart; the idea 
of the atom-searcher was breath-taking, lo say 
the least. Put we never found the identity of 
the destructive invaders. I don’t believe that 
any intelligent force would deliberately destroy 
a civilization without at least attempting to 
communicate with them. 

For a general improvement on the make-up 
of the magazine, 1 would suggest moving ‘‘In 
I’lmes to Come” to a more prominent place, 
say on the other side of the Hditor’s Page. Also 
more interplanetary novelettes, editor's eom- 
ments at the end of each letter — and here’s an 
idea for a new feature — how about a column 
entitled ‘‘In Times Past” in which we can men- 
tally look back on the old stories of three or 
four years ago. and recall otir emotions when 
we first read this or that story. 

Thanks, Ed. for removing the advertisements 
from around Brass Tacks! However, keep the 

Header’s Department in the back! Henry 

Roernstein. 1071 Mount Royal Blvd., Outremont, 
Montreal, Canada. 



rd like information on that convention. 

Dear Mr. Campbell : 

In my opinion the cover on the March 1038 
issue of Astounding Science-Fiction is the host 
cover since June 1036 which illustrated “The 
Shadow Out of Time.” 

Binder only had three pictures in this last 
issue. I w'ofiild like to see him illustrate the 
entire magazine. 

All of the stories were good this time. ‘‘V'ibra- 
tory” was best and “Martyrs Don’t Mind Dying” 
wa.s next best. 

“Flight of the Dawn Star” has an old plot 
in a way, but it is worked out well. It is re- 
mindful of Don A. Stuart’.s style. Speaking of 
Stuart, I think that the man is either part 
genius or he’s crazy. I don’t like his stories. 
They are too deep for me. I read all of his 
work, and once in a while T catch a glimmering 
of light hut most of the time I am in the dark 
(concerning his stories). But what I see when 
I catch that glimmer makes me want more. 

Have you heard anything of a Scienliliction 
Convention to be held in New York in 1640? / 
read a small article which stated th.at there 
would be a convention there at that time but 
the article didn’t give any details. . 

Well, here’s wishing you luck and may As- 
tounding continue to improve eneli month as 

much as It has been improving Willard 

L>cwey, 1005 Charles St., Everett, Wash. 



Astronomers? 

Dear Editor : 

I am very desirous of forming a club of as- 
tronomy enthusiasts. Anyone who is interested 
should get in touch with me at once ! — Abraham 
Osliinsky, 117 Van Buren Street, Brooklyn, N. Y. 




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Pro— 

Dear Mr. Campbell: 

You’ve no doubt forgotten me. but I haven’t 
forgotten you by any means, even though I have 
neglected to write for the past three (isn’t that 
horrible?) issues, due lo various reasons — 
mostly financial. At last. I've been able lo get 
the last three issues of the magazine from Janu- 
ary to March, and have just returned from the 
hospital, W’here the shook of what I’d aeon sent 
me. 

The last Fd seen of Astounding Stories was a 
magazine that w'asn’t worthy lo he called an 
apostle of that great (?i force called science- 
fiction! It was better suited for the junk pile. 
The next three issues were the most rem.irk- 
nble improvement that we have ever seen in 
any science-fiction magazine. There can’t be 
any den.ying it. It is excusable when the sto- 
ries that are submitted are all poor, for then 
the poor editor can’t do anything about it. 
We’ve seen in three short issues stories im- 
proved thousands of per cent. No sudden spurt 
of genius on the part of the authors can ac- 
count for such a change. Therefore, it must be 



Please mention this magazine when answering advertisements 



BRASS TACKS 



155 



the editor. Thusly, I now. pronounce John W. 
Campbell, Jr., a« a jrcnius of the first d^roe. 
His name ranking second only to that of Hugo 
Gernnhaek in the science-liction roster. 

Now, I can get on to the magazine itselr. 
The giratest change was the new name for the 
publication. For years we have been waiting 
for the name “sciencc*tiction” to appear on the 
title of a magazine, and. except for a brief time 
on the first six 1933 Amazing Stories, we have 
never had this greatest wish of all granted. 
However, something seems to be missing in the 
lack of the word “stories” on the title, but the 
addition of one totally overshadows the deletion 
of another. , , 

1 agree with the two readers who remarked 
on the utter uselessness of “Galactic' Patrol. 
Kven from Schachner it would have been a bad 
story, but from the great K. F. Smith, Ph. D. — 
why, that is the greatest shock one can. imagine. 
The oonliiniity was too scattered, the science— - 
or what science I could find — was all off, and 
it certainly looks puny compared to even an 
average story by an average author. Amen. 

Just consider; the March issue had more good 
stories than there were in the whole of 1937, and 
in the last three issues there have been more 
good stories than in both 1937 and 1936, though 
1936 was not without its epics. 

“Something From .lupiter” was better than 
the best story in 1937 and was ultra-ne-plus- 
ultrn. “h'light of the Dawn Star” was just fair, 
ac<*ording to the new basis of judgment which 
it has been necessary to formulate, but accord- 
ing to the old standard it would have been an 
epic. . „ . 

And now “Jason Sows Again. It is a pe- 
culiar mi.vture of genius and not-so-hot. The 
plot is ordinary enough, nothing greatly dmer- 
enl, though the weapon is. It starts out like a 
maRtcr])iece. Wunderbar! Tres Bon! Bxel- 
lentteV Kmenfe ! Or any other word meaning 
very good. Along about the middle it tames 
down to an ordinary style of writing, though it 
is still good. But, the science in the story is 
a little off somewhere. No matter how fantas- 
tic a theory is, if it sounds convincing, it Is 
passable. If it doesn’t sound coiivinciug, it 
shouldn't be in the story. The science isn t 
convincing, and therefore it takes a great deal 
awav fn.m the story. Still, it was very good, 
and ' I hope that the second chapter is half as 



good as the first. ^ 

“Dml in the Space Lanes” was a very nne 
adventure storv, well written and all the rest. 

“Wings of the Storm” was — well, what do 
you think? It was the only story in the issue 
that was reminiscent of the other regime. In 
other words— -not so hot. Do you think that 
iPs possible? Neither do I, nor lots of other 
faiiR. As I’ve said, if the science in a story 
isn’t convincing, the story is always detracted 
from. 

“Martyrs Don’t Mind Dying” was about the 
best time-story ever, but in the end it gets into 
the inevitahle hopeless mixup which all such 
stories arc bound to come to. Trying to not 
do sometldng in the past that wasn’t done, yet 
It was done, or he wouldn’t he trying not to 

do it again. Aghhhhhh What do you think 

of it ? 

“Power Plants Of Tomorrow” is about the 
best article vou’ve run. It should be called 
“Power IManVs That Oould Be Used Today.” 
This particular installment was the best in this 
particular scries, also. 

“Vibratory” was the best short in the issue, 
I guess, and was very good, though, as is the 
usual case, the plot has been used over and 
over in one form or another. 

“Flareback” comes next, but was not vastly 
different from the usual new-invention-during- 
space-war type of story. But it was well writ- 
ten. 

Last was “Ryes of the Past.” This was only 
fairly good scientifically, somewhat worn out in 
plot, but was so well written that it makes up 
for itself. ^ly vote for the best in the issue 
goes to “Something From Jupiter.” 

And that finishes this missile. Congratula- 
lions, Editor Campbell; you’ve given all of the 
fans, in three months, what they’ve been yell- 
ing for for years. All T ftan think of now is for 
you to put a blurb on the contents page, or 
eomewhere. telling us about the cover, t now 
place Astounding Science-Fiction at the head of 
the list. 

Best of luck.— T. Bruce Yerke, 1256, N. 
Kingsly Dr., Hollywood, Calif. 




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— and Con, 

Dear Mr. Campbell : 

After reading your various editorials I often 
wonder if you think that your readers are con- 
tented and plea.sed with your work as editor 
of Astounding. Apparently you seem to think 
they are. Perhaps yon are right in thinking 
so, but ril never acknowledge the fact until you 
have taken a “right-about face” and change your 
present views and policies. 

In the few short months that you have been 
editor, you have destroyed practically all of the 
marvelous work that Tremaine had done for sev- 
eral years before you. You have broken up and 
disfigured every point that he strove to uphold. 
The magazine has now absolutely no tradition to 
look up to. From the first of your Issues, the 
magazine has had a rushed, slupped-together air 
about it. Even the printers seem to sense it. 
My last few i.ssiies have been loosely bound, rag- 
gedly cut, covers set up unevenly — all in alt a 
general slovenly appearance. 

Truthfully, 1 can say the mag is not one 
fjuarter as good as in and not a fifth as 

good as in 1937 — certainly not very complimen- 
tary to you. Its stories have declined in (Qual- 
ity — eaeh issue is just a bit poorer than the 
preceeding. Its art work has gone down fright- 
fully. Brass Tacks has been neglected, heavy 
science articles have increased. All these signs 
point to a slow but sure break-down of the old 
policy. Worst of all — or perhaps it seems the 
worst to me — i.s the disgracing placement of 
Brass Tacks. In the March issue its position 
was e.xcellent. Why couldn’t it have been left 
there, instead of being shoved among columns of 
advertising? Science Discussions is good and 
should be kept, but in moderation. Why is It 
to-day we rarely see any more i»f the highly 
enjoyable letters of the type once printeil in 
the oM Wonder Stories? That was a depart- 
ment to be proud of! 

Concerning the science articles: they arc ail 
right in their place — but their place isn’t ex- 
actly in science-fiction. When a reader finds one 
of these Interesting, and they usually are. I know 
that be would just as soon read the same arti- 
cle in a scientific magazine, thus conserving 
Astounding’s space. Many a fine novel or exten- 
sion of Brass Tacks could be very well put on 
these pages. 

As I have started out by being critical of your 
r<^giine, Mr. Campbell, I might as well continue 
along in that vein. There are plenty of things 
to find fault with, never fear. For Instance, I 
mentioned above that your art work has de- 
clined steadily for the past few months. Only 
Bold, it seems, has stayed up to his usual high 
standard. Wesso is .scarcely worth mentioning 
among the top-llight artists, now. Binder is 
excellent at times, but all too oflen. poor. 
Schneeman is improving with the years, I miglit 
add. Rut why have you suddenly used un- 
bound illustrations? Pictures without border 
give the mag a much more undignified and cheap 
appearance. 

Finally, in your editorial of April. 19.38, you 
ended by emphatically saying that Astounding 
was not a dictatorship. I very much doubt that 
statement. Who asked to have the title changed? 
Who asked for “mutants?” Who asked for the 
letters to be surrounded by ads? Who asked 
for this all-around metamorphosis, such as the 
new publication date, new-concept stories and the 
like’ Certainly not the mass of your readers, 
and I doubt very much if the few influentiial 
soience-fiction fans wanted such abrupt and un- 
satisfactory changes, either. Therefore, it must 
he either the publishers or yourself, w'hom I will 
take the liberty of calling “Dictator” C.amphell 
until such time as you have changed suffieicMtly 
to warrant another title. Remember, you brought 
this on yourself. Yours for a less “mutant-ed” 
Astounding. — .Tames S. Avery, 55 Middle St., 
Skowhegan, Maine. 



Science club members — attention! 

Dear Editor: 

Congratulations on your fine set-up of recent 
months and your mutant ideas. The astronomi- 
cal cover plate was tops, as was “Anachronistic 
Optics” bv M. Schere. Keep yonr eye on him. 
for he has a remarkable story-telling ability 



Please mention this magazine when answering advertisements 



157 



BRASS TACKS 



rarHy found in sciencc-lictiou. He’s a top- 
noteher on handling human emotions, and 
should go places. Would you please announce 
the foilowing; Will all science-fiction fans who 
are graduates of New York City high schools, 
and who belonged to their high-school science 
eitibs, communicate with the Secretary of Kappa 
J’bi Kappa at 200 Seventh Avenue, Brooklyn, 
New York. A city-wide organization of scien- 
tific high school alumni is being formed, with 
the coo|K*ration of the American Institute. — 
Warren J. Woolsey, President. 



Ain’t Nature grand! — at times! 

W.v <)f?ar Mr. Campbell; 

I iim writing this by (be flickering flame of 
iwy wee tallow dip, here in the middle of flood- 
bound Los Angeles. What with all our modern 
devices of science getting it in the neck from 
outraged Nature, it is a very good thing we 
have not forgotten the simpler methods of our 
ancestors — tins candle, for instance, as well as 
the good old safety razor with lots of soap 
lather, in place of the latest electrically scien- 
tific business for removing whiskers from the 
face. Science is wonderful — when it works ! 

Anyhow’, this is not a news letter. I've got 
something to say, and 1 really had best be 
about it. Brass Tacks gives one a better chance 
to air his views than did Science Hiscussions. 
Science HiscussionK was really very lovely, and 
all that sort of thing — I even bad a letter 
printed therein about a year ago, from which I 
rr<‘civj'd results in the way of two concerns 
wanting to sell me back numbers of magazines, 

J received the final letter just the other day, 
and it came all the way from England. It's a 
small world, and not at all strange how one’s 
name gets bruited about even to the antipodes. 

That time, too, I aired a few opinions on the 
progress of our magazine. And this time I am 
just going to air— opinions. I've been reading 
«cirnc»*fictiou since its inception in 1025 or 
tboreuhouts, and, as time has progressed, I have 
followed always the better stream. Many brook- 
lets have diverged from the original course, 
and it is iny opinion that Astounding has imita- 
tors — ixd competitors — unworthy the name of 
science-fiction, being not even a reasonably ac- 
curate facsimile of same. But even the step 
of the bolde.st and the best falters at times. I 
speak in particular of a few stories during the 
past year which struck me as being not quite 
cvmmc il faut. 

“Orinoly of Roonerion” for instance. That 
one was permissible to be inserted in the Third 
Header as a diversion from tales of Br’er Rabbit, 
Reynard (he Fox, etc., <«/ naus. I never felt so 
written down to in my life — and I’ve read a 
lot in several different languages. Not a poly- 
syllable, not a compound — not to speak of com- 
|)lex--Henleiice ! I can't think of any others off- 
hand that erred so greatly in this respect, (I 
won’t mention the moth-eaten Cinderella plot, 
simply inane incidents, nor the stereotyped 
characters.) It seems to me also that blight is 
cre<»piug in here and there, as witness “A Duel 
in the Space Lanes”, Weak in motive, shallow 
in its conception. However, all stories can’t be 
good, so I'm not kicking — much. 

For ray part, I found that “(Jalactic Patrol” 
lived up to its ballyhoo in the first and second 
installments, and after that it wasn’t so good 
as it had hade fair to be. Too alow for one 
Ibing. The final installment was the hat placed 
on crooked, so to speak. Boskone is revealed — 
or remains unrevealed? — as nothing whatever, 
with no reason for existence — no answer to the 
question, why? We followed that story for 
six months, waiting for the author to answer 
the questions he had brought up. Did he? 
Perhaps — but neither completely nor satisfac- 
torily. 

The best issue to date — since this time last 
year- -is the current issue, March. Not count- 
ing "Jason Sows Again” — which I won’t read 
until next month when I get part two — I can 
count six little gems and only three duds. 

"The Master Shall Not Die” was the best 
in Ihe book. 

"Something From Jupiter” was excellent, .as 
also “Flight of the Dawn Star”. "Wings of the 
Storn)”, "Vibratory”, and "Flareback” belong 
aleo in this same category. 

The weakest yarn was "Duel in the Space 

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Lanes" — already commented on. “Mart.rts Don’t 
Mind Dying" contained a bit too muck blood 
and thunder — penny dreadful, I might say, with 
not quitie strong enough characterization, and 
a conclusion that did not merit the haiUl*ur>. 
"Eye of the Past” I have placed among the 
duds, although it did not plop as heavily ns the 
other two. My main objection is that the 
Binder brothers have been harping upon the 
same chord about long enough, l.et’s permit our- 
selves to avoid warfare past, present, and fu- 
ture. E and O had the makings there of a 
fine little yarn without dragging in an unknown 
and unexplained, as well as unmotivated, con- 
flict between the Tellurians and Heaven knows 
w'hat. I know' they've enough imagination to 
dope out something the earth-people could have 
fought — so why didn't they? At least intelli- 
gent worms, caterpillars, ants, roaches, beetles, 
or toadstools. Or maybe the boys are slipping? 
I’m still waiting for something as good as they 
used to write to show up. 

If you, Mr. Campbell, get to see this letter, 
you probably won’t be very enthusiastic to learn 
that I am sending you a story under separate 
cover which you probably won’t see, anyway, »n 
it is every bit as lousy as some published stories. 

I am sorry if I have seemed to ride rough- 
shod over cherished points; however, see how 
few I have picked from the past twelve months! 
All in all, Astounding is making a very good 
place for itself among the fiction of the day — 
and I haven’t ceased to buy yet! 

You have my assurance of continued support 
of your fine magazine. — Manly M. Bonlster, 9iiG 
West Ninth St., Los Angeles, California. 



jFfe waifs f/7/ Ae*s got a winner before he 
writes. 

Dear Editor : 

The first part of “Three Thousand Years !" 
was too short, hut it Ls right up the old Thomas 
Calvert McClary alley and looks like another 
winner. 

Either he’s smart and only writes, (or would 
it bo signs?) winners, or else he’s wasting his 
talents by not writing oftener. For one, I’d 
like to see him at least every other mouth or 
so. He writes about such original situations 
that there is little danger of getting tired of 
him. — Richard Bischoff, 2121 New York Avenue 
N. W., Apt. 800, Washington, D. C. 



** Jason*' a nightmare. 

Dear Editor : 

Just a few lines thumped out on ye olde type- 
writer to let you aud yours know' how much t 
appreciated the April masterpiece of Astound- 
ing Science-Fiction. 

To me. a mere avid reader of Interesting fic- 
tion of all sorts, plus a bit of scientific knowl- 
edge practically insignificant In it.s amount, your 
magazine is tops in its field, aud its field ia 
tops to all others, if you get what I mean. 

This past Issue was O. K. except for that 
misfit of a child’s nightmare known as “.Tason 
Sows Again". I never did care much for Burks 
anyhow. I’ve rend him in other magazines and 
he* doesn’t agree with my metabolism. 

I liked the idea of not so many ultra-shorts 
and stories a little longer. The stories them- 
selves were good with "Hyperpelosity" tops In 
the short stories, and "Negative Space" and "Iszt 
— Earthman" running even and both very good 
— in fact, better than usual, (i. e. truck like 
"Mercurian Adventure" and that super-super- 
super-super science storv, “Galactic Patrol"). 
“Three Thousand Years 1’^ has all the beginnings 
of a good novel and If it keeps up like it 
started I’ll be satisfied. 

And of your artists, Hold seems to me to put 
over the best ideas. Who was It that drew (?) 
that nightmarish concoction illustrating “Mat- 
ter Is Conserved"? 

Here’s hoping my first letter reaches the place 
of the elect In Brass Tacks. — Frederick O. Kern- 
pin, Jr., 028 W. Diamond St., Philadelphia, Pa. 



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few 1935 models: Chevrolet $50.00; 
DeSoto, $62.50: Dodge, $59.20; Ford, 
$50.00 to $55.00: Cadillac. $151.37; 

Packard. $112.50. 



ENOOHSEQ 

By M*mt€T «/ 

Society JUtomolive Eogineert 
National Aeronautical Assn. 
Detroit See. ot Engineering 
Pontiac Engineers Ciub 

hut oa e«Dd JOB L. H. Smith’* com- 
plet« report which chows that the 
compreeeion of a badir wora 6*crl- 
inder cDotor was iocr eased 82.4% and 
brought back to within .09 point* of 
its original new car efliciency. Sach 
tests conclusively prove the aeosa. 
tional merits of Ovrfaaol. 



MOHEY-MAKING TERRITORIES OPEN 



For Salesmen and Distributors Who Act Quick! 



Quickly placed through spark plug openings and 
at a fraction of the cost of new rings and rebore .this 
amazing mineral Alls In and plates worn rings and 
cylinder walls. Ovrhaul givee your motor Increased 
compression, Cuts oil consumption, increases gas 
n^leage, adds new power and speed, with other sub- 
stantial benefits of new rings and rebore. Ovrhaul 
has been thoroughly tested and proved by impartial 
laboratories and great Universities in the United 
States and abroad. Proved harmless to finest motors. 



INSTALLED IN 30 MINUTES! 



Ovrhaul works on the mineral plating principle — No spec- 
ial tools needed. No car tie-up. No danger of mining motor 
by grinding cylinder walls — works in while yon drive, saves 
you time and money. Gives you months of extra car ose. A 
single applicacioD lasts up to 10,000 miles. 




Sales of Ovxhaol have been phenomenal. Hundreds of Salesmen and Dis- 
tributors in the United States and abroad. The biggest money-maker in years. 
National magazine, newspaper and radio advertising carry the message of 
Ovrhaul to over 18,000.000 car owners. The market has barely been scratched. 
To wide-awake men we offer opportunity— an opportunity which may never 
come your way again. A fast selling, repeating article, fully protected by 

U. S. and foreign pateats. Save# 
motorists millions of dollars. Ex- 
clusive territories still open— but 



? ’ou must act quick if you want 
D on this. 

PHONE, WRITE OR 
WIRE TODAY] 

Let os send you free sample 
which every salesman is fur- 
nished for demonstration. Let 
us show you. with their per- 
mission, ACTUAL earnings of 
onr distributors. I.«t us show 
you bow you can start in this 
business NOW— before allter- 
ritories are assigned. The mar- 
ket is there — we fiave the pro- 
duct— are you the man? Let’s 
find out. write, phone or wire 
today.— e. L. Meilinger,Pres. 

OVRHAUL CO., 

E-9AO Lqa Angeles, Calif.' 



SAMPLE FREE! 

If your car is wasUng oil and gas, before you spend up to 
1160.00 for new rings and rebore— send your name and adtlresa 
on the coupon below for a free sample of this amazing min- 
eral which expands up to 30 times when heated, and full de- 
tafls of a real money-making opportunity. Air mail reschea 
ua ovor-night. 



SAMPLE COUPON 



B. L. Mellinger, Pres., iPaate on Postcard and mail) 
Ovrhaul Co., E-918 Los Angeles, Calif. 

Without cost or obligation, rush me FREE SAM- 
PLE. Also show me your big money-making plan. 

Name 

Addresi • 

City....... State 



Please mention this magazine when answering advertisements 




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World Mike 



DELUXE MIKE 

t Lanro. I'ihatantial. ail* 
Lnictal mlko. PracUa* ra- 
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Mads wpiyiaii^ for tiomd oae, 
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smart. aiuMH»f. Juai wiut 
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Cool and cxniuriabi*. 
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WIKI black oilcluth iwak.' 
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2S 

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oblr many Um*a. IVm'tw-H 
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matttri. astPeae ovaatrrk* 
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M-ent k*xa for varlona t 
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Ekcbidaii SS'3 te.l! 

dxnamoa. motor*, railloa. 
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bulldine 
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Marriage Lic ense lOc 

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Midget Radio Crystai Radio 

Baautirut mldicai mantel Contplete Radio. 3 &cl 

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POCKET RADIO 

l*Tuhe Pocket Radt-i with 
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BIRPCT FROM RADIO. 
B.>*iiiir>il Ca'.hedral t.me. 
ComoU'ie In uuc unit wicn 
batwi'lca. tube. awUch. 
I'tia III pocket. I Isiea 
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Pr4a yoitoa'i'd 



Stock Cer< 






ci'rrent. 
batlei lei 



erynortiiiilbeineUauareoUb'c to 
■e’a lender paoolan. TWien loee 
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ale I* thetanRuaeeaCUielrcom- 
iiiM M tell U.edcpUiaarttiacon- 
ijili'R paaaiim U<ai U en.iwlne* al 
'irhearta. Ills (oenoUuf the suui , 
ihe love.lom that tliia work h*« 
an coMioile-J All about LOVEl , 



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biinallc 



author Lalw* y< 
.and ti'e* you 



PROJECTAN 

I a trie Prolecio*. 
i4«^t_^ciaar picture* 
Is Xlm.^^tiin^tTaTUc 
ul wau-h pictnie*. 
•’■s^flaihlikht cell*. 

';U'^R**t»*id 3S® 
A^UnrVj;: 



Midget Bible 



Jdi/jC.ROLIRoWlCA 






Bull Dog Fish Hooks 



RSO JokeiRRid. ga-ffr.faSfgr. 

die*. 23 Tricica. 

lOXarlorCaiue* 

I071.2I Pusaiea 

Piobitm*. Comic >e.-l(auvoa, Funr 
tfl Parlor PaaUnua. is Pllrtat 
HaRiea.R ttwir Meaelnn. to p 
3 le«, St AmuRInE Ucpertmonta. 
OumhAlphahot. Shadowscraphr. F 
lari i'orruneii with Oard*. ^vatal 
etc., Bypaotiiiat, Vaatriloauism. 1 
L'hecUers. Oes*. Domlnoet. FoK 
R Men Mori it. A jw aram* tS C 



fo Mvfle and Sports Bvrywhora Yov Go 
Thia aimacluiK mldiret^jwhe^ ml't''* ■k-.'" I I 

w^re, ^*lMAe^or*^t1oui>l*^beai| 

_MI.DQgT *^P^K<^^ RAOJO^^**Prie^.^!*.‘‘.'‘!_^. . . 



n*h hlie*. Ihe second h'>nk tlrike* 
outaiae U-f luod. Thr harder ttie (1 
Ihe fieHCef' il*e hnok hnhis blinPh 
RI.1 durable L'«e Uie«» ii.xA* aiuf 
NEVER LOSE A PISH. Pr ea Rich. 



HROW YOUR VOICE 



A Into A trunk, nnd«r th« bed dr Eaywbera. LoU of for, 
fooling tOROhop, Dollaoman or friondc. i 

^ THE I/ENTRILA ^ instrument, fits fn th« moQtbi 
^ 1 , . « , ” * ***^'^ owt of Bight, lued with aboTo for 
1 ^ Bird CalH. etc. Anyone caa- nte It. Never fail*. A 
m complvte book with full course on Ventriloquism V Am m 
y i oOdther wltii the Ve ntriio aent poapeJil for only M 

fCET A VENtRILO'QUIST^DUMMYi M 

Dummy Ban «ita on vour 4 

iRRinMIK MCBkOy OURUHy {tn-'r- bjin from be- A 



llrery swoker want* tiiia .new magic inrentionTj 
r«ok ivhat U&ppen* at tiic touch of tl>e magic buttpn:| 
A cigarrite slip* out anlomatkalljr toward your IhmI 
>^you bear a cliek^-atiii tiiere'* a flame bumincl 
richt at lih; end ot the cigarette. A toucli— * puff- 
end that's enough! A life Mrer to car dritcrA You 
puff, and with the lighted cigaivtie between your Lpa. 
you draw it from the ctie. Then tliere is anotiier 
click. The magic cas* is closed, tlic ffanw Is out, and 
the next cigarette automatically jtimi>s into position. 
Ania;;mgly ca«y to u.'C. Iteliable, safe 
deiwndaMe. Price Postpaid 



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OVSR to* |U-U8 TRAt!oN» 

Kin, Stirina Danet$ 



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Please mention this magazine when answering advertisements 










NEW TIRE WINS 







IN SENSATIONAL NON-SKID TESTS I 



2 UFE»SAViW6 FEATURES . . . AT NO iXTItA COST! 



The never-ending 
spiral bars of the Life- 
Saver Tread act like a 
battery of windshield 
wipers— sweep the 
water right and left- 
force it out through 
the (^eep grooves . . . 
give the rubber a 
track to grip. 



Don’t gamble on 
blow-outs. Every new 
Goodrich Safety 
Silvertown is con- 
structed with the now 
famous heat-resisting 
Golden Ply that gives 
you rea/ protection 
against high-speed 
blow-outs 



Stops Quicker, Safer Than Tires 
Costing up to 70% More! 

H ere, at last, is a tire so utterly difiFerent in action that, at 
the first sign of a skid, it turns the wet road under your 
car into a "dry” surjace. 

In exhaustive road tests made by the largest independent 
testing laboratory in the country, against regular and premium- 
priced tires of America’s six largest tire manufacturers, no 
tire tested, regardless of price, came up to this new tire in 
non-skid action. 

For safety’s sake, ride on Goodrich Safety Silvertowns. 
See your Goodrich dealer or Goodrich Silvertown Store now. 



READ THE REPORT- 

from America’s Largest 
Independent Testing Laboratory 

'"ROTH regular, and also the 
^ premium-priced tires of 
America’s six largest tire manufac- 
turers were submitted to a series of 
exhaustive road tests made over a 
three months’ period by us, to de- 
termine their resistance to skid- 
ding and wear, with the following 
results: • 

. ';NON-SKID-The new Good- 
nch Silvertown with the Life-Saver 
1 read gave greater skid resistance 
than any other tire tested, includ- 
'I'’®* at from 40% 

to 70% higher in price. 

MILEAGE — The Goodrich Sil- 
vertown gave more non-skid mile- 
age than any of the 
other tires tested in its 
own price range— av- 
eraged 19.1% more 
miles before the tires 
wore smooth.’* 

PITTSBURGH TESTING LABORATORY 



^Good rich 




Silvertowa 



SKID PROTECTION OF UFE SAVER TREAO OplOEN PLY BLOW-OUT PROTECTION 





PEOPLE ^ 
APPRECIATE THE 

COSTLIER 

TOBACCOS 

IN CAMELS 



THEY ARE THE 

LARGEST- 

SELLING 

CIGARETTE 
IN AMERICA 



What Margaret Bourke-Whlta,- 
famous photographer, said when Ralph 
Martin inquired if she thought one ciga- 
rette was as good as another 

"Cigarettes seem alike to me. Do you 
find some difference between Camels 
and the others. Miss Bourke-White?" 



LUMBER CAMPS, dams, mines, subways ias above) — ap- 
peal to Margaret Bourke-White. She has gone all 
over the United States, to the Arctic, to far countries. 
Her photographs are famous. They’re different! And 
that’s just what Miss Bourke-White said about 
Camels at the New York World’s Fair grounds {right)» 



Domestic 



"Camels are very diflferent, Mr. Martin, 
in a lot of ways. My nerves must be as 
trustworthy as a steeple jack’s. And 
Camels don’t jangle my nerves. When 
I’m tired — I get a 'lift’ with a Camel. At 
mealtimes, I like to enjoy Camels 'for 
digestion’s sake.’ There’s something 
about Camels that agrees with me — all 
around! 1 think that’s what counts most." 



A matchless blend 
of finer, MORE 
EXPENSIVE 
TOBACCOS - 
Turkish and 



Copyright, 1938, 

R. J. Reynolds Tob. Co,, 
Winston-Salem. N. G. 



ONE SMOKER 
TELLS ANOTHER 



"oiMas0&es wm/0£" 



Expert growers tell 
their preference in 
cigarettes —it’s Camel! 

smoke Camels because 
we know tobacco, ” 
tobacco planters say 



Floyd Siiiither, whu 
grows tol)u(H‘o, says: 
"Last year I grew a 
handsoiiu* crop of to- 
bacco. 'I'Ih* ( 'am«*l iicojik 
V choice lots. 1 sinok(‘ ( 'ani- 
cls- so do most planters. I know tht 
(luality Uibacco that goes in them.' 




t Harry C. King, a success- 
ful grower for t wrmty years, 
says: "Camel bought the 
choic(' lots of my last to- 
bacco <Top — paid more 
for them. So I know th(^y use finer, 
more expensive tol)accos in Camels. 
That’s why Camel is my cigarette.’’